


Dialogic: Season 6

by Polly_Lynn



Series: Dialogic [8]
Category: Castle (TV 2009)
Genre: Estrangement, F/M, Family, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Marriage Proposal, Partners to Lovers, Romance, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-19 22:55:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 22,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20665169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: After watching around to the end of the series (i.e., "Hollander's Woods," because nothing after that exists), and taking some time to watch a few other things during workouts, I'm back around to the beginning of the series again.This story is 23 brief sketches, one for each episode of Season 6, inspired by a line of dialogue from the episode.I did the same thing for Seasons 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 but there's no reason you couldn't read this story (or any chapter of any of these stories) independent of the others.





	1. Change of Venue—Valkyrie (6 x 01)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s letting him take care of things. She’s asking for help and letting him take care of her, and he’d love to attribute that to the fact that they’re engaged now. They’re engaged,but it’s more than just that. He’d like to believe that the fire of those awful few days has tempered their relationship, and that’s part of it. When he’s not glum and melodramatic and entirely Martha Rodgers about it all, he knows they’re all the better for that painful airing out about lies and the job and where the two of them are going.

> _“Except—this isn’t New York.“  
—Kate Beckett, Valkyrie (6 x 01)_

* * *

She’s letting him take care of things. She’s asking for help and letting him take care of her, and he’d love to attribute that to the fact that they’re engaged now. They’re _engaged, _but it’s more than just that. He’d like to believe that the fire of those awful few days has tempered their relationship, and that’s part of it. When he’s not glum and melodramatic and entirely Martha Rodgers about it all, he knows they’re all the better for that painful airing out about lies and the job and where the two of them are going.

They’re all the better for it, but that’s not entirely why she’s letting him help, organize, throw money at the staggering number of details she has to square away before she starts in DC. That day is hurtling toward them, and the truth is she’s overwhelmed. She’s excited about the job—invigorated by its possibilities—but she’s overwhelmed, too, and that throws him a little bit for a loop. She’s trepidatious and grieving over the coming upheaval, and that takes form in vacillation, indecision, hesitation—in things that seem wholly unlike her. So he helps. He takes care of things. He takes care of her, though how, exactly, to do that is a little bit of a moving target.

One moment, she’s dead set on stripping her apartment to bare floors and walls. She’s determined to box up everything—every last thing—for shipment to DC. But the next, she’s looking at fully furnished places, and the next moment after that, she’s back to salting the earth in Tribeca.

“It makes sense, Castle,” she insists, but her teeth worry at a corner of her lower lip that’s already raw and cracked with the anxious workings of her teeth. She throws up her hands in the middle of the place and twists from side to side, trying to take in all of it at once. “I can’t just have stuff here and stuff there!”

“You can have stuff here and stuff there,” he says, coming to her rescue, coaxing her arms back down to her sides. “For a while.” He folds his arms around her, willing calm into her. “For a little while until you get settled.”

“I’ll get settled, won’t I?” The question is muffled against his chest. “Will I ever get settled?”

“You will,” he says with more confidence than he feels. New York runs through her veins, as it does through his, but she’s asking for his help. She’s asking him to believe with her. For her. “We’ll find you a great place, and you’ll settle in.”

But she can’t decide on what constitutes a great place. She casts a wide, erratic net. He can tell that she’s desperate to have something, _anything, _finalized, so she’s ready to take whatever, wherever seems good enough on that particular day.

“You should see it, Kate. You shouldn’t take anything sight unseen.” He stays her hand on the keyboard, not for the first time. She’s seconds from digitally signing a contract on something that looks dire even with the help of slick realtor magic. “We can do a there-and-back.”

“We can’t,” she insists. “It’s a waste of time and money—”

He gives her a heavy look at that, and she has the grace to blush. “It’s the space of a work day—a regular person workday, not a Beckett workday—if we set things up in advance.” 

“We,” she says, sagging with relief. “You can come?”

“Of course.” He does some mental gymnastics on things he’ll have to move around, how he’ll have to play Paula and Gina off each other until it’s a done deal. Until they realize it’s him, not one another, they should be furious with. “Of course I can come.”

He comes. They go. It’s more complicated than either of them thought. It’s hotter than hell, and he runs out of pro-swamp propaganda early. Everything is spread out in a way that is so not New York, and there are a million things to consider about a place for her, among them, a commute that won’t have her losing hours of her life if she takes the metro, and one that’s drivable for early early mornings and late, late nights and weekends.

The thought of that—of how little time she’ll have for anything—makes her quiet. It makes him quiet, because the alternative is an outbreak of the Martha Rodgerses when she least needs it. So he pulls the other direction. He throws himself into cheerful optimism and makes up elaborate stories about the places they’re viewing—apartments and townhouses and a few falling-down stand-alone things—but everything they see is just … weird. Everything looks weird and feels weird and the rules about things are weird, but she doesn’t need to hear that, so he looks for the good. He makes it up when he can’t find it.

“Potential,” he declares late in the afternoon. He turns a half circle in the middle of a living room with hardwood floors that someone apparently sanded and never re-finished. “And it’s close to …” He trails off. She’s wandered over to a doorway just off the hall. “Kate?”

“Three-quarter bath,” she says without turning.

Her shoulders shake. He rushes to her. He thinks she’s crying until he sees past her. The toilet and sink are an unfortunate shade of brown. They’re set at rakish angles to one another, and he can’t see how one would use the toilet without one elbow, at least, in the sink and their feet in the after-the-fact, DIY shower stall that’s peeling away from both ceiling and wall.

“Three-quarter,” she gasps between gulps of laughter.

She sags against the doorframe and slides to the floor. She takes him with her. They laugh themselves into a sweating, slightly miserable heap. They laugh themselves quiet.

“The one I found online wasn’t bad,” she says finally. “It was better than this.”

“Everything is better than this.” He deflates. “But, Kate, the only thing that wasn’t terrible was the kitchen, and it’s not like you’re going to want to cook—”

“But _you _will,” she cuts in. “And it had good light. The little second bedroom—”

“The modestly sized closet,” he snorts and gets an elbow for it.

“The _bedroom _had light like your office.” There’s weight to that. It has the air of an argument about it. He opens his mouth to argue back, then snaps it shut. He listens. “And it’ll fit a desk and a decent-sized armchair. And the other bedroom, you can see the ci—you can see the city if you squint.”

“You can?” He turns her toward him. He sees the guarded, stubborn, hopeful look on her face. He sees her looking for a promise that where she lands isn’t just about her. He sees her trying to take care of him, just as much as he’s trying to take care of her. “I didn’t think of that.” 

“Tell me about it.” She pushes to her feet. She reaches down to pull him along with her. “You didn’t think about a lot of things, Castle.”


	2. Daedalean—Dreamworld (6 x 02)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She knows from first-hand experience that there is nothing less private than a private hospital room. Except this—a private hospital room in a military hospital. Because this has the all-hours poking and prodding and beeping and measuring that she remembers from the eternity she spent in the hospital after her shooting, but in this room, he’s also beset on all sides by a host of aggressive representatives from departments whose names are made of the same seven parts of speech arranged in different orders.

> _“If it’s all the same, I’d like to be helping.”  
—Richard Castle, Dreamworld (6 x 02)_

* * *

She knows from first-hand experience that there is nothing less private than a private hospital room. Except this—a private hospital room in a military hospital. Because this has the all-hours poking and prodding and beeping and measuring that she remembers from the eternity she spent in the hospital after her shooting, but in this room, he’s also beset on all sides by a host of aggressive representatives from departments whose names are made of the same seven parts of speech arranged in different orders.

“He’s not up to it,” she stands in the doorway with her arms folded. “As I called and told your office.”

That might be a bluff. She’s called several word-salad offices to stave off exactly this, but it’s impossible to be certain the office this particular nondescript young man belongs to is among them. It’s impossible to be certain that this nondescript young man is not the same nondescript young man she turned away earlier, and he’s disguised himself by swapping out out his stone-colored chinos for khaki.

“It’s just a few signatures … ma’am.” He stumbles over the _ma’am _and makes a move as though he can hide the thick stack of file folders behind his back without looking a complete fool._If _she had any empathy to spare, she might feel sorry for the guy. If she had any to spare.

“I’m good at signatures.” Castle’s voice drifts through the cracked-open door.

She swears silently to herself and freezes the man to the spot with a glare. “Give us a minute.”

The Guy From Who Knows Where looks like he’d rather not, but it’s not a request. She shuts the door in his face.

“Castle.” She moves to the bedside, trying to switch gears from bouncer to fiancée, but it’s no easy task. “You need to be resting.”

“I’m in a bed.” He pats the side rails. “I’m resting. I can handle signing a few things.”

“You’ve hardly been awake for more than fifteen minutes at a time. You can’t follow a conversation—“

“I couldn’t follow _Pi’s _conversation.” He scowls. “No one could follow Pi’s conversation.”

“You should know what you’re signing,” she says more sharply than she means to.

“Because I’m going to have the option not to sign them?” He’s skeptical. He should be, but he smiles. “Kate, it’s okay.” 

“It’s not.” She takes the hand he’s reaching out toward her and drops into the bedside chair. “Castle, you shouldn’t have to …” 

“Shouldn’t have to what? Rack up my second awesome cover story of the calendar year?” He squeezes her fingers and gives her a playful look. “Ooh, do you think they’d let me do punch-up on the cover story?”

“You shouldn’t have to deal with this … dysfunction.” She throws up her hands, frustrated with how weak a word it is.

Her vehemence startles him. He’s worried. She can see the furrows deepening in his forehead as he struggles through the exhaustion, and the last thing she wants it to be worse for his recovery than nondescript young men bearing NDAs. She should let him rest. She should make sure everyone lets him rest, if that’s the only damned thing she can do here. She moves to go, to downshift back into bouncer mode, but he finds her hand again. He tugs at it until she settles back into the chair.

“The work is complicated. Always has been,” he says quietly. “The more important the work, the more complicated it gets, right?”

“More important,” she repeats. It sounds like a lie. It feels like a lie.

“You saved the secretary’s wife,” he reminds her. “You saved me. That’s definitely important.” He puffs his chest, trying to make her smile, but the rawness of it comes at her in waves. She drops her head, resting it on their joined hands atop the bed’s side rail. His thumb traces the arc of her ear. He dwells in the silence with her a moment. “You got the guy. Justice for Bronson.”

“And a cover story for his girlfriend, for his family.” She swallows hard and turns her head to look up at him. “And no justice for Farrah.”

“No. No justice for Farrah,” he admits. He knows her well enough not to try to soften it, and she’s grateful. “She was very brave, wasn’t she?”

“Very brave.” She nods. She knows what he’s getting at. What truth he’s trying to lead her toward. “And she would have known the risks.”

“Important work.” He struggles against a yawn. His eyelids sink. He’s losing the battle to stay awake. “Complicated.”

“Complicated,” she echoes. She leans in to brush a kiss to his forehead. She rises and goes to do the only thing she can do.

She opens the door, and the nondescript Guy From Who Knows Where peels himself off the wall. He taps the edges of his thick stack of folders into alignment and purses his lips to make his case again.

“No,” she tells him. She tells the next nondescript guy and the next and the next. “He’s resting.”


	3. Dispatch—Need to Know (6 x 03)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He offers to take her to Bora Bora. He tells her they should head to the cantinas of Tierra del Fuego and sample all the delicious red-bottled liqueurs they can find. He offers up Disneyland, Disney World, Dollywood.

_“Nobody tells you what it feels like when it’s gone, you know?”  
—Ramon Russo, Need to Know (6 x 03)_

* * *

****He offers to take her to Bora Bora. He tells her they should head to the cantinas of Tierra del Fuego and sample all the delicious red-bottled liqueurs they can find. He offers up Disneyland, Disney World, Dollywood.

“We can go wherever you want,” he says, trying to sound soothing, rather than desperate. “For as long as you want.”

They’re lying on the bed with the undisturbed duvet beneath them. They’re both still in their clothes. She has her hands folded on her stomach as she stares, almost unblinking, at the ceiling. 

“DC,” she says. Her voice is rough with disuse. She sounds like she’s been crying, though she hasn’t shed a tear that he’s seen. “I’ll need to take—” There’s the merest hitch in her voice. A blip that’s dramatic and startling against the backdrop of her otherwise utterly flat tone. “Take care of a lot of things.”

“DC.” He nods in the dark, though he wants to tell her no. He wants to gather her up and tell her that it’s ridiculous to even think about any of that right now, but he settles for reaching across the bed and to take her hand. “Okay.”

“Can we—” She clears her throat. Her fingers wriggle between his, seeking a tighter hold. “If we could drive. I’d like to—there are some things I want to bring back. Things I’d like to have sooner.”

“Of course.” He risks turning on his side to face her. He draws her hand to his lips and presses a kiss to her knuckles. “We can drive. We can go whenever—”

“Tomorrow,” she cuts in. “I just want it done.”

“Tomorrow, then.” He leaves it at that, though it seems terrible to him. It seems like punishment heaped on punishment. “That’s what we’ll do.”

They wake early. _He _wakes. She is in one of the armchairs in his office with her feet drawn up a cup of coffee already grown cold when he shambles in, blearily worried that she might have taken off without him. She’s wordless, or nearly so, as he gets ready. It’s not much of a process. Her bag is already packed for the early morning flight she won’t be on, and his never quite got unpacked from the last time they stole a day and a half down there.

She heads for the passenger’s side of the car, head ducked, no discussion. She climbs in and makes herself small. It breaks his heart, but all he can see to do is follow her lead on this. She doesn’t want to talk, and really, what can he say that will be even close to right? He turns over the engine. He navigates out of the garage, through the tunnel, out of the city.

“I’ll have to tell people,” she says. It’s been a little less than an hour. The radio is on, playing low, indistinct music. It’s the first thing either of them has said. “I’ll have to make calls.” She shifts her gaze from out the passenger-side window toward him and he sees out of the corner of his eye that she looks dazed. “It’s a weird thing.”

He should say something, but everything that bubbles up in his mind seems wrong. It _is _a weird thing. It’s an awful thing and a necessary thing, and it’s not like Hallmark makes a card for this occasion. The prospect of it—calling Lanie, the boys, her _dad_—makes him want to stop the car, get out, and lie face down in the road moaning, but she has the phone in her hand.

“Lain. Hi. I have some … news.”

It’s not a long conversation. Lanie does most of the talking. She sounds like an angry Charlie Brown grown-up through most of it, but the call ends with a snort of laughter from Kate. He makes a mental note to offer to send Lanie to Bora Bora. To Tierra del Fuego or Disneyland. He makes a mental note to offer her anything in this world he can get for her.

“She says she’ll help hide the bodies,” she explains. There’s a pained, crooked smiled on her face. She drops the phone into the door well, out of sight, as though that’s enough for now. 

“Useful,” he says. “Lanie is a useful friend to have.”

“You’re useful.” Her hand creeps across console between them to find his on the gear shift. “Get-away driver.” Her fingers wriggle between his. “You’re essential, Castle.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This was more extensive, initially, but I lopped off the end. This felt like the right place to stop.


	4. Uncloudy Day—Number One Fan (6 x 04)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gathering at The Old Haunt is raucous to say the least. It has all the momentum of a teenage party when someone’s parents are out of town. Everyone she can think of is there, right down to Captain Gates, who’s sitting at the end of the bar, nursing a scotch and mostly looking on at the festivities.

> _“Everything here tells the same story.”  
—Richard Castle, Number One Fan (6 x 04)_

* * *

The gathering at The Old Haunt is raucous to say the least. It has all the momentum of a teenage party when someone’s parents are out of town. Everyone she can think of is there, right down to Captain Gates, who’s sitting at the end of the bar, nursing a scotch and mostly looking on at the festivities.

Everyone has a slap on the back for her. They have a drink to press into her hand. They have some version of _It’ll be great to have you back _or _The place hasn’t been the same without you _at the ready, and she feels sort of odd about it.

Or, rather, she’s _waiting _to feel odd about it. She’s left the Twelfth twice in the space of a year. She’s come back twice in the same interval. She looks around the room for signs of resentment about it—rules skirted and exceptions made. She scans the sea of faces for sneers that say it’s not so much _coming _back as _crawling _back. She waits to feel in her own heart and mind like a quitter, a cheater, a failure, but all she really feels is happy. All she really feels is home.

She’s standing alone when the thought settles on her. Smiling people mill around her, tossing well wishes her way, but she’s alone. It’s the one thing that does feel odd. It’s the one thing in her world at the moment that needs setting right. She strikes out to find him.

It’s not hard, exactly. He moves from group to group. He keeps to the fringes of each, smiling and saying little. He’s playing the host, or so she thinks at first. She shadows him and expects to see him monitoring the mingling quotient and the drink levels and all the tiny details he’s good at at managing. She does see that—it’s practically second nature to him—but she sees something else, too.

She sees him avoiding. Everyone has back slaps for him, too. They tell him how brave it was to go into that office, and how stupid. They shake their heads in baffled wonder that he could tell it was two different people sending the texts, and he disengages every time. He doesn’t play up the massive bruise on his chest or pretend he’s still picking glass out of his hair. He doesn’t preen or puff up or hold court about his extraordinary day. He skims the surface of conversation, interaction, celebration.

She threads her way through the smiling, chattering throngs to intercept him at the end of the bar. Gates has just gone. She’s watched them exchange a few words that seem civil enough. He’s ducked behind it to grab another bottle of something that’s run dry down by the old brass beast of a cash register. He turns practically right into her. He looks distinctly caught out, though he recovers quickly.

“Detective,” he says and pretends to correct himself. He steals an exaggerated glance at his watch. “Aha! It _is _after midnight. I can officially call you that again.”

“Officially.” She grins. Air fills every inch of her lungs. She’s torn between her own surprisingly unalloyed contentment and concern for him. She looks around at the party. It’s still in full swing and showing no signs of letting up soon. “Gonna be a rough official workday at the precinct tomorrow.”

“Rough,” he repeats. Something close to troubled flickers across his face, but he recovers. “Well, these folks are the best in the business. They deserve the occasional blow out.” He holds up the bottle in his hand. “Which is why it’s my job to keep them well-watered.”

“Castle,” she takes the bottle from his hand and sets it on the bar. “Are you okay?” She anticipates his reflexive response—automatic reassurance—and heads him off. She comes at the question head on. “Are you … having a good time?”

It’s a lame question. It’s the wrong question, and she fully expects him to side step. There’s another flicker of trouble and she knows he’s considering it. She sees him decide not to. 

“I’m having …” He pauses. He looks out over the bar where people are laughing and leaning in to whisper to one another, where LT is picking out melodies on the piano and Lanie and Esposito and Ryan are arguing about something. He smiles. He looks proud and content and paradoxically unsettled about it. “I’m having the best time, and it feels strange.”

“Strange?” She leans a hip against the bar. She settles in to the first conversation they’ve really been able to have since he went bravely, idiotically into that dental office.

“I have—tonight I have everything.” He settles on his elbows. He tips his head toward her as though he’s breathing her in, drinking her in, taking her in, and she wants suddenly to be anywhere but here. “I have you. I get to be with you right out in the open. And I get to work with you. I get this.” He gestures grandly to the party. “I get to _work _again, and I really missed it.“ His gaze drops to the polished surface of the bar. “I have everything, and you … you lost something you really wanted, and it feels strange to be having such a good time.”

“Don’t,” she says quickly. Her mind works on it. She knows in the long run it’s more complicated than the ease and rightness she feels tonight. She knows regret and hurt and the specter of failure will come over her in waves, but not tonight, so that’s what she tells him. “Castle, I’m … I am having the _best _time, too.” She ducks her head to look him in the eye. “Let’s not feel strange tonight.”

He meets her gaze. He takes in the truth of it. A slow-burn smile spreads across his face.

“Not strange for now.” He reaches for her and steals a rough kiss. “No promises about later.”


	5. Fledgling—Time Will Tell (6 x 05)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s something different about the tap on the book case upright, something that distinguishes it from the half dozen that have come before it. He couldn’t say what, though. He’s not really paying attention.

_“Listen to me! I need to save her!”  
—Simon Doyle, Time Will Tell (6 x 05)_

* * *

There’s something different about the tap on the book case upright, something that distinguishes it from the half dozen that have come before it. He couldn’t say what, though. He’s not really paying attention.

“Hey, you wanna have a sleepover?” Her hip appears on the arm of the leather chair. Her fingers glide over one shoulder and across the nape of his neck to land on the other. She presses a kiss to the crown of his head. “Your mom said it’s okay.”

“She called you,” he says without dragging his unfocused gaze from the wall of windows. “Didn’t she?”

_“You _were supposed to call me.” She tugs at a lock of his hair. She waits a beat or two, then goes on when it’s clear that a low-level guilt trip isn’t going to get a response. “Yes. Martha called. She thought you could use some company.”

“Company,” he snorts. He reaches for the tumbler propped on the other arm of the chair and finds it empty. He shakes it, but there’s not even a slosh left. “I’m sure those were her words exactly.”

“Company, intervention.” She plucks the glass from his fingers and sets it down somewhere out of sight. “She’s worried about you.”

“I’m not the one she should be—” That has him swiveling toward her, at last, but she cuts him off.

“She’s worried about Alexis, too,” she says with a mix of sharpness and concern in her tone. “You left her to worry alone.”

“Oh, she’s worried now,” he snaps. “Because she didn’t seem worried when she was telling me to stop being so dramatic.”

She laughs at that. Her hands fly to stop her mouth, but it’s too late. The image of his mother telling him—of Martha Rodgers telling _anyone_—to stop being dramatic has run away with her composure.

“I’m glad this is funny to someone.” He’s being awful. He _knows _he’s being awful in some distant part of his mind, but his mind isn’t driving the bus right now. He moves to push himself out of the chair, but she has a hold on him.

“It’s not,” she says as she tumbles into the wide seat and pulls him in alongside her. “Sorry.” She swings her legs across his lap. It’s as much to keep him there as is it is for comfort, his and hers. “You’re upset. I know you’re upset.”

“And you don’t think I should be.” It’s a half-hearted challenge. He knows she won’t argue with him, and the refusal does its work. It takes most of the fight out of him, leaving nothing behind but a blanket of sullen gloom.

“I … kind of don’t know,” she admits, further disarming him. “What’s the thing that worries you most?” He has a host of things locked and loaded, but she holds up a hand. “What _specific _thing, not just ‘she’s making a mistake’?”

“But she _is _making a mistake,” he protests. “In what world is the very fact of Pi not a mistake?”

“No world. There is no world in which Pi is not a mistake.” He’d like to crow over that, but she shoots him a warning look and goes on. “But adults get to make mistakes. They get to make stupid choices, and Alexis is an adult. So. Specifics, Castle.”

“What’s the point?” he grumbles. “If you’re just going to shoot down everything I—”

“I’m not trying to ‘shoot you down’.”

Her aggravation takes form in an unflattering impression of him. It’s her turn to make a move toward getting out of the chair. It’s his turn to stop her. He doesn’t want to be alone with this. He thinks he probably shouldn’t be alone with this.

“I know.” He slips his arm beneath her knees. “I know you’re not.” He presses himself to her in an awkward hug. “Sorry,” he mutters. “Sorry.”

“Okay.” She lands a soft punch against his ribs and gives him a smiling scowl when he plays it up. “Are you worried he’s taking advantage of her? Financially, I mean,” she adds with another warning jab to the ribs.

“He can’t afford a place on his own,” he leaps on that little tidbit of legitimacy. “She admitted as much. She wouldn’t be doing this if he weren’t such a—”

“But they’re splitting the rent. She’s not supporting him.” She’s not asking. She’s taking the wind out of his sails and moving right along. “Does he treat her badly?”

“No!” He bristles. “You think I’d let him stay—you think I’d let him keep _breathing _if I saw him so much as—” 

“No, I don’t.” She stirs in his lap. She presses a palm firmly against his chest and forces him to settle down. “And from what I’ve seen he seems to really like her.” She nudges his cheek with her nose. “And she really likes him.”

“But _why?”_he erupts all over again. He gets fucking dramatic. “What is there to like about that oblivious, smelly, lazy, aimless—”

“Who knows?” She’s exasperated. She drops her head back and talks to the ceiling. “They like each other. They’re interested in the same things. And maybe she likes the way he smells. Maybe she likes his weird, weedy little six pack—”

“Six pack?” he sputters He sits up abruptly. “Gross. How do you even—?”

“How do I know that?” she laughs. “The guy owns one pair of cargo shorts and a towel—”

“That’s _my _towel,” he interjects.

“We could burn it.” She ducks her head to give him a wicked look. “Would that make you feel better?”

“No,” he pouts.

She loops her arms around his neck. “Then what will?”

“Nothing,” he mumbles into her neck, then a moment later, “You smell good.”

“I got out of a bubble bath to come save you from yourself.” She tugs at his ear.

“We could have a bubble bath here.” He lays a heavy head on her shoulder. “And a sleepover. My mom said it’s okay.”


	6. Contrapuntal—Get a Clue (6 x 06)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s been walking a tight rope lately. She’s been trying to stay out of the situation with Alexis as much as possible, but not so much out of it that she’s avoiding it entirely or abandoning him or … other bad things starting with A.

> _“Okay, so the pieces fit together. What do they mean?”  
—Javier Esposito, Get a Clue (6 x 06) _

* * *

She’s been walking a tight rope lately. She’s been trying to stay out of the situation with Alexis as much as possible, but not so much out of it that she’s avoiding it entirely or abandoning him or … other bad things starting with _A._

She’s been trying to strike a balance and keep calm about the fact that in the not-so-distant future, she’s going to be a stepmother. She’s going to have an adult stepdaughter, and she’s not at all sure what that means.

She’s not sure how she fits into this rapidly devolving situation with Alexis and Pi and an apartment that’s somehow too nice and too grim at once. She doesn’t know how she figures into the future of his family already in progress. She’s not at all sure how either he or Alexis—the once and future stepdaughter—_wants _her to fit in. She’s been walking a tightrope, and she feels like she’s just been knocked right off it.

“You didn’t … you weren’t the one to tell Alexis?” Her voice breaks. His attempt to mend fences, such as it was, apparently did not go well, and he’s called seeking sympathy. She’s hardly said a word. She’s been making what she hopes are the right kind of soothing noises for a while now, but that’s not why her voice breaks. “Castle, you didn’t tell her we got engaged?”

_“I was _going _to tell her, but you and I did the Four Seasons thing, and then Alexis was flying out, and then the second she landed, my mother just blurted …” _The explanation has the air of something he’d rehearsed in his head a hundred times after the fact, but saying it out loud, he trails off. _“That’s bad, isn’t it?” _

She curses silently as she paces the length of her living room. She tries to wrangle the mixture of hurt and guilt and exasperation sloshing around in her gut. She tries to arrive at some consensus about how she’s feeling and who she’s feeling it about, because he can be so fucking _oblivious, _but she herself played no small part in the messed-up timing of it all. And, slithering around all that is some pit-of-her-stomach worry that timing is just an excuse—that he was afraid to tell Alexis because he knew she’d hate the news. 

“Yeah,” she says in the end. “That’s pretty bad.”

_“But she didn’t _say_anything.” _The protest has no teeth now. He’s gone from indignant to miserable. _“Not once all summer.__She never gave me the chance to apologize or explain. She just hatched this—this Pi revenge plot.”_

“Castle.” She’s exhausted by this all of a sudden. She drops on to a stool at the counter and rubs the sudden-onset headache between her eyebrows. “Pi is not—” She stops short. She thinks about her own teenage contretemps with her parents, about what he wants to hear and what he needs to hear. She thinks about what she wants to say and what she should say. She tries to get back on the tightrope. “I don’t think Pi is _just _a revenge plot.”

_“But you admit he’s _partly _a revenge plot!” _He jumps in.

“The point is, it’s not all about you!” She brings a palm down hard on the countertop. The tightrope _boings _abruptly up and down and there’s silence on both ends of the line. Heavy silence.

_“I’m dumping on you.” _There’s a muffled quality to his voice and she pictures him scrubbing a broad palm down his face_. “Kate. I’m sorry.” _

_It’s okay. _That’s what she means to say, tries to say, wants to say, but nothing really comes out.

_“I’m used to you being my sounding board about this stuff.” _There’s still the trace of a whine in his voice. She hears his teeth come together. She hears him struggling against it, and damned if that somehow doesn’t make this all more complicated._“I’m used to just blurting everything out so you can tell me how ridiculous I’m being.” _

“I can still do that,” she interjects.

_“I know you can.” _There’s a tight snort of laughter on his end. _“I know.” _There’s silence and then careful words, slow and shy and tentative._“But you’re not just a sounding board anymore. You’re in this.”_

“Yeah, I am,” she says, and the words are just as careful. They’re just as shy and tentative. “I’m in this, Castle.” 

She is. They are. They’re walking a tightrope. _  
_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It makes no sense at all that Alexis found out about the engagement while she was in Costa Rica. If Castle is still cutting a check for the trip immediately before the proposal happens, then there’s no way she’s leaving for a while. It’s equally unbelievable, though that he wouldn’t be the one to tell her if she were in the country. But that’s the on-screen canon they gave us, so this is my attempt to live by it.


	7. Bequest—Like Father Like Daughter (6 x 07)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’re grabbing a quick dinner at Remi’s, the three of them, just like that.

_“You can’t build a case based on evidence that isn’t there.”  
—Alexis Castle, Like Father, Like Daughter (6 x 07)_

* * *

They’re grabbing a quick dinner at Remi’s, the three of them, just like that.

“It’ll have to be quick,” Alexis says with a warning look, and he swears it can be. He swears it will be as he offers one arm to her and one to Kate and they make their way out of the precinct.

It’s a little too jolly at times. They’re all trying, and it’s a little forced, especially at first, but they settle in. The two of them gang up on him. They laugh about the scam artist librarian, about the tire iron and his aborted storming of Lyle Gomez’s front door. He makes sly comments about tempting Alexis from the path of fruitarianism. Kate kicks him under the table and Alexis narrows her eyes, but then she takes a gargantuan bite of her burger and they laugh it off. It’s a quick, tentative outing, but it’s good.

He should feel lighter than air right now. In some ways, he does. He trails behind the two of them—his daughter and the love of his life—as they leave the restaurant. They’re walking side by side, easier in one another’s company than they’ve been in months. Longer than months, really, though it’s something he sees now that he that he’s kept out of the corner of his eye. It’s something he needs to … attend to more deliberately, whatever that might mean.

But the two of them and the relationship they have—have had, will have—aren’t what’s weighing on him. He’s not entirely aware anything_is_weighing on him until Kate’s fingernails dig into his palm, a pointed, wordless piece of advice to simply say good night to his kid at the top of the subway stairs and not make a fuss about how late it is. He’s not entirely aware that he’s not lighter than air until Kate slips an arm around his waist and steers him up the street toward their own stop.

“You did good,” she says, low in his ear.

“Good?” he finds himself saying. “I guess.”

“Guess?” Her head swivels toward him. They veer a little from the straight and narrow path before she course corrects. “You—the two of you—saved a man’s life. You caught a killer no one was looking for.”

“We did,” he says, and there’s that lighter than air feeling. “She was amazing.”

“You’re a good team.” She bumps his hip with her own as they walk. “And it seems like your prison sentence is over.”

It’s both a question and a statement. It’s reassurance and curiosity about whatever keeps bumping him back down to earth.

“Over. All of a sudden.” He’s curious about it, too. He’s turning it over in his mind as they descend to the subway platform. He has an unsteady moment as the air pressure changes, signaling the train’s impending arrival. He feels he pitch and yaw of the world under his feet as he pictures the mix of hope and desperation on Maggie’s face and Frank’s, the somber, unassailable certainty on his daughter’s. _My dad’s a genius at uncovering the real story. _

“She was so sure I could fix it,” he says quietly. “The whole time, she was sure.”

He’s not doesn’t know if the roar of the arriving train has drowned out the words. He’s not sure that he wouldn’t rather they had, but she gives him a sharp, strange look as she tugs him down into the seat beside her.

“Of course she was sure. You’re her dad.”

She says it as though it’s obvious. As though it’s a truth universally acknowledged that this is how it is with fathers and daughters—with children and parents—but that’s what he’s curious about. That’s what he has no way of knowing, given his own life. Because he loves his mother, but certainty isn’t the first word she brings to mind. Because his feelings about his own recently unearthed father are ambivalent to say the least.

“Of course,” he echoes. He puffs up as though it _is _obvious, but she gives him that sharp, strange look again, and his whole body contracts. He bumps back to earth. “Is that how it’s supposed to be?” It’s not exactly what he wants to ask—it’s not exactly what he wants to know—so he tries again. “Is that how it is for you?”

“Now?” She’s a little startled by the question. She’s a little suspicious that he’s deflecting from whatever this thing is. “Or when I was Alexis’s age?”

“Is it different?” He turns himself toward her and meets her eyes to show he’s really asking. “Now and then?”

Her lips twitch in a scowl. She fights it off, though it takes her a quiet moment. There’s just the roar and sway of the train. He sets his hand palm-up on her thigh in a gesture that means whatever she wants it to mean. That he’ll wait, that he’ll let it drop, that he’d love to know whatever she wants him to know. She lays her own on top of it and slips her fingers between his.

“That’s not how it was when I was her age,” she says after a while. “He was drinking, and I was … I couldn’t be sure of anything.” She turns to look out the window at the grimy rush of the tunnel walls. Her gaze is distant. She shakes her head. “That’s not how it was then.”

“And now?” he prompts. He risks prompting, because he wants to know about her. Because he wants to know if this is how it’s supposed to be or if he’s managed to hopelessly screw up. Because he wants to _know._

“Now, I know he can’t fix everything. But I still believe he can.” She tips her head back his way and smiles. “Because he’s my dad.”

“Oh,” he says. Because it sounds obvious when she says it like that. It sounds like that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be.


	8. Particle and Wave—A Murder is Forever (6 x 08)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She does not want to fight over Linus the Lion. Not that they’re really fighting over it. They’re bickering. They bicker, and that’s fine, and she would happily drop the subject of Linus and where in the loft he lives if he’d drop it. She’s registered her objection, she’s suggested a solution, and he’s nixed it. It’s his place, his lion, his stuff. That’s the end of it, or it could be if he’d stop explaining his position on an issue that’s already closed.

_“It’s like she was never even here.”  
—Richard Castle, A Murder is Forever (6 x 08)_

* * *

She does not want to fight over Linus the Lion. Not that they’re _really _fighting over it. They’re bickering. They bicker, and that’s fine, and she would happily drop the subject of Linus and where in the loft he lives if _he’d _drop it. She’s registered her objection, she’s suggested a solution, and he’s nixed it. It’s his place, his lion, his stuff. That’s the end of it, or it could be if he’d stop explaining his position on an issue that’s already closed. 

The stupid thing is it’s not Linus at all. Not that it is really anything to speak of. She’s just had some on and off trouble sleeping lately. She’s been restless and easily roused and she’s kind of indignant about it. It’s been a year and change since she’s had any real trouble on that front, and Linus just got caught in the crossfire. An imaginary glint of light on his glossy surface, and she was convinced—in the way only a true insomniac can be convinced—that it was Linus and Linus alone that was keeping her up.

It’s ridiculous that he even caught her on that particular morning. It’s simple happenstance that he woke up early and he noticed her glaring resentfully at a lion who has a name and has a backstory and who is staying right where he is, and that’s _fine. _If he’d happened to wake up some other morning, he’d have caught her drawing her gun on the infernally loud clock he has on the bookshelf in his office, or maybe on the doorman with his stupid whistle down at the cab stand. And as far as Linus goes, she’s not about to start peeing in the corners of the bedroom forcing him to hold her purse outside dressing rooms while she tries on swimsuits, or whatever weird fear he’s harboring about her plot to invade his lair and steal his identity.

Not that he’s really afraid of any of that, any more than he’s really afraid she’s serious about staying at her own place on the regular. They’re just bickering like they do sometimes, and that’s another stupid thing about it all. Even if he were afraid of that—of identity theft or nocturnal abandonment—he knows he’s gotten his way. He knows that at this point, with sleep deprivation pounding between her eyes and her ears and in every single one of her tooth sockets, the last thing she wants to do is fight about Linus or anything else. The last thing she wants to do is try to sleep alone in her vastly inferior bed.

So it would be good if he shut up about Linus, and he—even he—has to know that. And still, he doesn’t shut up about it. He doesn’t let it drop. He quotes from Alice “Not Actually a Therapist” Clark’s sloppy, pop-sci nonsense. He messes with her elephants and she calls his bluff. He makes pointed comments and gives her significant looks, and just when she’s about to give him the fight he apparently wants to have, there are seashells on the wall where she’ll see them first thing when she was up in the morning, where she’ll see them if she’s having trouble sleeping. There are seashells and Linus has a new home.

It’s a sweet gesture. It’s a _thoughtful _gesture in the most literal sense of the word, and damn him for seeing through the impulsive, irrational thing she’d asked for on a bad morning after a sleepless night. Damn him for finding instead the thing she now sees has really been on her mind and keeping her up at night now and then. Damn him for knowing things about her she can hardly put it into words, even now.

She doesn’t have to put it into words, though. She spends the night on his side of the bed. The only trouble she has sleeping is the good kind of trouble. She makes sure to wake early. She’s off today and she knows what she wants to do with her time.

She’s quick about it. She’s a little haphazard—at least by her standards—but she fills the mid-sized box she’s chosen with things from her place that are very much _her, _things that are very much _him, _and things that are very much _them. _She trots to the subway with it and shoulders it through the revolving door into the lobby of the loft. She races up the stairs with it, and bursts into the bedroom. She wakes him up with a bounce on the bed and the clatter of hastily packed things in the box.

“I brought stuff,” she announces as she coasts alongside his body. She runs her fingers through his wild morning hair. “From my place, so we can find places for it here.”

“Stuff,” he mumbles. He’s grumpy with sleep at first, but even through the pre-coffee fog, a smile spreads across his face. “Oh, stuff! Good.” He reaches for her, burying his face against her neck. “I like your stuff.” 


	9. Ingeminate—Disciple (6 x 09)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He can’t work the case, because there is no case to work. He hates the neatness of it. He hates the hamster-wheel loop his mind can’t break out of.

_“How long do you think it’s going to take before we stop thinking about what he’s done?”—Lanie Parish, Disciple (6 x 09)_

* * *

He can’t work the case, because there is no case to work. He hates the neatness of it. He hates the hamster-wheel loop his mind can’t break out of.

“Tell me again how there’s no case to work,” he says in the dark. He says because he knows she’s awake, too. He says because he can’t help it. “Tell me how that is _possible.”_

There’s no hesitation before she answers, no sigh. She’s not exasperated or annoyed with him, and although he knows she is quietly furious at the situation—at every stonewall and roadblock they’ve run up against in trying to make a case for actively pursuing Kelly Neiman—her tone is flat. It’s informational.

“Carl Matthews, as promised, confessed to his murders.” He senses her fingers slinking across the bed toward him and reaches out with his own. They’ve both had a burning need to be sure of each other since the swell of Vera Lynn’s wavering voice filled the loft. “He claims he’s never heard of Kelly Neiman.”

“But the victims are connected,” he begins. It’s less an objection than a prompt, like a child impatient for the next part of a bed time story to unfold. “Through Neiman. Through the theft of the 3XK files. Why those victims if not because Matthews knew that?”

“You know the math, Castle.” She turns on her side toward him. Her face is luminous in the dark. “One victim, look for motive; two victims, look for connections; three, you’re looking at a serial, and all bets are off. Matthews says he stalked his victims first, but otherwise chose them at random. Classic serial.”

“Neiman is connected to Tyson,” he says in a small voice. He almost hopes she doesn’t hear. She’s been patient with him—_so _patient—but he can see the slow-motion flutter of her eyelids as she fights sleep to keep him company in this. “We know that.”

“Tyson is dead as far as the NYPD is concerned.” She lets go his fingers to stroke the stubbled line of his jaw with her thumb.

“And you believe that?” he asks automatically.

“I know _you _don’t believe it,” she says just as automatically. Their soft laughter mingles in the dark. Call and response—it’s what passes for a joke between them about this.

“I can’t stop thinking about Lanie.” He lets his head loll her way. It’s not not true. His mind returns again and again to all Lanie has suffered in this, but he knows it’s infinitely worse for Kate. She’s said little enough about it since Lanie shared the details with all four of them when she floated the idea of using the fact that she’d been assaulted as a possible reason to keep the case open. She’s said next to nothing, but he knows from a hundred small tells that feeling as though she has failed—is still failing—her friend cuts deep, and as long as they’re on the hamster wheel together, he wishes she’d talk about it. “All of those details, just to terrify her. The beauty products, the tattoo. He knew—“

“Or she knew,” she cuts in, and they share a dark smile. It’s another joke. She’s Team Neiman Acted Alone, he’s Team Zombie Tyson.

“Or she knew.” He dips his chin to nip at her skin with his teeth. “He—or she—didn’t need that level of detail just to sign out some files. But he knew Lanie would be the one to collect every sample and go through every test result. He knew what it would be like to strip Pam Hodges’ body and see—”

“Torture,” she says through her teeth. “Just like last time. Just like Tessa Horton.”

“Tessa.” He’s startled. It’s a visceral shock to hear the young woman’s name. To relieve the sight of her mutilated face and the images of barbed wire cutting into her skin as she hung from the ceiling, and to hear Tyson’s ludicrous super villain monologue echoing through his mind—_Murder is just an act._

“He wins twice.” Her voice is bleak, strained. Their bodies draw instinctively closer. “He takes the victims’ lives. He takes them from their families. And then he’s in our heads.”

“Or she is.” He catches her hand in the darkness. He presses it to his cheek, to the corner of his mouth so she can feel his grim smile. “I know you’re right. I know.” He turns his head to kiss her palm. “But what do we do? We just … let it go?”

“We let _this _go.” She gestures toward the darkness, toward the middle of the night. She lets her hand come to rest against his chest. “We think about Lanie and Esposito and what they need.” 

“We don’t let him win twice,” he says, as much to himself as to her. As much to the darkness as anything.

“Or her,” she murmurs.

Their soft laughter mingles in the dark as sleep closes in on them both. It fills his head, for the moment, with something other than the swell of Vera Lynn’s wavering voice.


	10. Mad Libs—The Good, the Bad, and the Baby (6 x 10)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It wasn’t as bad as you thought it was going to be,” he declares as he steps up behind her and flashes a grin in the mirror. “Admit it.”

> _“That something we’re missing. I think we just found it.”  
—Richard Castle, The Good, the Bad, and the Baby (6 x 10)_

* * *

“It wasn’t as bad as you thought it was going to be,” he declares as he steps up behind her and flashes a grin in the mirror. “Admit it.”

“I didn’t think it was going to be _bad.” _She swats at him lightly with the back of her hairbrush and gives him a sly look. “I admit nothing.”

“Fair enough.” He shrugs. “You thought it was going to be a complete disaster.” Her hand reaches back with certainty born of practice—a _lot _of practice—but he dances his way clear of another swat.

“Oh, and you thought what?” She goes back to brushing the tangled waves of her hair. “That the Hallmark Channel would be beating down the door to secure to the rights to the story of the first Castle–Beckett–Rodgers–Whatever-the-heck-Pi’s-last-name-is Family Thanksgiving?”

“I don’t think they have last names on Pi’s home planet.” He crosses the room to sit on the bed. He leans down to begin extracting himself from the Pilgrim costume. “But did you see your dad trying to get his real first name out him?” He chuckles to himself as he fusses with the baffling shoe covers with their big, fake buckles. “Always thought your interrogation skills came from your mom, but _that _was impressive.”

“Impressive is one word for it.”

Rude is another word for it. It’s certainly the word Alexis would have used if Martha hadn’t come to the rescue with a phone full of Benny pictures. Her dad, apparently, had developed an abiding distaste for PI in the space of the elevator ride up from the lobby with no one’s favorite fruitarian. Of course r_escue _isn’t quite the right word, given how much of the evening’s conversation then revolved around grandchildren and significant looks she’s definitely not prepared to acknowledge. She sets the brush down and sets to work on her own costume. Trying to get the fringed tunic off is kind of like going through a carwash without the car.

“You’re just—” She growls in frustration, and the next second he’s there, lifting the soft faux-buckskin free of her head. She gives him a grateful pat on the cheek before taking the top from him. “You’re just glad to have an ally in the war against Pi.”

“War?” He starts to follow her to the closet, but falls back to the bed when she gives a baleful look to the wide white collar and the general silliness of the costume he hasn’t made much headway on. “I am a reformed man when it comes to Pi. I’m just glad that there was someone at the table your dad hates more than me.”

She freezes in the act of trying to get the stupid, slippery costume on to its hanger. Her head pops out of the closet to gape, but he’s working at the costume’s awkward arrangement of fasteners. “My dad doesn’t hate you.”

“Someone he likes less than me, then,” he shrugs.

It’s an offhand comment, but it’s not at all. _Stipulated, _she thinks to herself. She remembers her mom, her dad, saying the word to one another, smiling about it sometimes and gritting their teeth others. She thinks about the ebb and flow of tension in her own little family and how long—how _very _long—it’s been since she’s dealt with any kind of family dynamics beyond just how she and her dad are. How they’ve come to be, and that’s not at all how they were before. She drops the costume in a heap. She throws the hanger on top of it and goes to him.

“My dad doesn’t not like you.” She sits on the bed hard enough to make the mattress bounce. “Castle—”

“Kate, I’m kidding.” His hands fall away from the button under his chin he’s still struggling with.

“You’re not,” she says. She sees the hint of tightness in the smile he gives her. She feels the tension in the squeeze of her knee he means to be reassuring. “You’re _not,” _she says again. She waits him out.

“I’m … _mostly _kidding.” He draws his hand away. He fiddles with the skirts of the stupid, long black coat. “He’s gotta hate me a little. I let Pi happen, after all.”

“Castle.”

His name is a warning. He heeds it. He caves with a nod at the floor. 

“We’ve been through a lot.” He steals a look at her. His hand twitches toward the scar peeking over the neckline of her camisole. “He’s your dad. He has to wish you were with someone … steadier?”

He’s having trouble finding the words. _He’s _having trouble, so she doesn’t know what hope there is for her. She stares at her knees. At his knees and the rug.

“He never met Josh,” she blurts suddenly. She’s not sure what it has to do with anything, but the next factoid pops up. “And he only met Will by accident.”

“Accident?” He gives her a curious look. She can see his mind working a mile a minute on the information itself, but he still can’t resist the story. “What kind of accident?”

“He’s early. All the time. He showed up at my apartment and Will hadn’t left yet.” Her toes still curl at the memory of four excruciating minutes of Will stammering _Sir _repeatedly and her dad saying close to nothing at all. She shakes it off, though. She finds what she needs in the uncomfortable memory. In the memories she doesn’t have at all. “Me and my dad—we have a big blank. A lot of big blanks. And we’re both still working out how to fill them.”

“Blanks,” he repeats. “We’ve got those, too.”

He does, she realizes. They do. She thinks about the elbow-bumpingly crowded table and the people who aren’t there. 

“So we fill in the blanks,” she says as she sets to work on the stupid buttons of his stupid costume. “And it’s not always a disaster.”


	11. Theodicy—Under Fire (6 x 11)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He has a role. It’s not necessary in every case they work. It’s not always vital to the job, but he absolutely has a distinct role: He is the one who hopes.

> _“Appreciate the pep talk.”  
—Kevin Ryan, Under Fire (6 x 11)_

* * *

He has a role. It’s not necessary in every case they work. It’s not always vital to the job, but he absolutely has a distinct role: He is the one who hopes.

She is determination and discipline and ferociously linear logic. She considers every angle, and when she runs out of angles, she finds new ones. She _makes _new ones, failing that. She never gives up or gives in, and he sometimes wonders if she really is some kind of physics-defying perpetual motion device.

But he is the one who hopes—for the best, for the break, for things to go their way. When grit and determination and_work _fail them, he is the one who holds on to what hope there is. He is the one who searches for it, glimmering in cracks and corners and at the margins of everything. He is the one manufactures it out of whole cloth as necessary, because that’s his role. Because they need both—hope and herculean effort—to do the terrible work they’re called upon to do.

But it comes to an end there in air that’s oily and thick and alive with the cacophony of flames. His run as the standard bearer whose device is the light at the end of the tunnel comes to an end as Ryan’s voice, faint, but unmistakably determined, crackles between them.

_There’s something I need you to do. _

There’s more after that. Between his gasping breaths and racking cough, peppered among the grating bursts of static and the harrowing dead air that follows, Ryan tries to lay out a desperate, barely coherent plan—a phone calling a phone calling a phone.

It sounds like nonsense at first, like the worrisome gibberish of an oxygen-deprived brain, but the truth hits them both like a physical blow: He doesn’t know, of course. He hasn’t the faintest idea that Jenny is _there._That she’s steps away and his child is who knows how close to entering the world just as he exits. He doesn’t know.

Horror passes between them. She covers the phone speaker as though she’s forgotten that Ryan can hardly hear them anyway. She is motion no longer perpetual. And he is without hope.

It’s not a passive thing for him. Hope dies a violent death at his hands. In the instant that feels like an eternity, she covers the phone speaker with her palm and looks at him with wide eyes. He looks back and gives her nothing. He takes. He_takes._

“We have to bring the phone to her,” he says. “We have to do it now, Beckett.”

Her mouth tries to form his name, but no sound comes out. Her fingers tighten around the phone. Her eyes are drawn inexorably toward the ambulance, an eerie square of brilliant light from their vantage point. Her gaze swings back his way, and he wants to give her what she’s asking for in every stiff, quaking cell in her body. He wants to play the role, do the job, act the plucky sidekick who always finds the silver lining, but he can’t. He can_not._

“Kate,” he says as gently as he can. It’s not very. It’s not very gentle at all. “Now. He doesn’t have—” His voice fails him, though his resolve remains agonizingly intact. “There’s no time. He needs to say goodbye to her.”

“Goodbye,” she repeats.

Her voice sounds strange and blank and old. She stares down at the phone in her hand. She looks up at him, hurt, confused, devastated, but he’s turning her by the shoulders. He’s crowding her toward the eerie square of brilliant light.

She makes it there under her own power. She pulls away from him, hurt, confused, devastated, and arrives at the mouth of the ambulance with her shoulders back and her chin up. She hands the phone off. She shatters in the face of Jenny’s hope. He shatters, too.

_It’s you. Is it really you? _

She is in pieces, every one of them motionless. He is in pieces, every one of them without hope. They are in pieces and he doesn’t know how they survive this. He doesn’t know if there’s life after hope.


	12. Sanguine—Deep Cover (6 x 12)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s not sure what she’ll find when she gets to the loft later that night. She’s not sure she should be finding anything at all. She contemplates going back to her own place. She tells herself that he and Martha might need some time to sort out this strange encounter. She tells herself a lot of things when she’s afraid. She’s a little afraid of what she’ll find when she gets to the loft.

> _“We have quite a robust firewall system. It’s never been breached.”  
—Anderson Cross, Deep Cover (6 x 12) _

* * *

She’s not sure what she’ll find when she gets to the loft later that night. She’s not sure she should be finding anything at all. She contemplates going back to her own place. She tells herself that he and Martha might need some time to sort out this strange encounter. She tells herself a lot of things when she’s afraid. She’s a little afraid of what she’ll find when she gets to the loft.

It’s mostly ridiculous. The two of them—him and Martha—drinking wine is the most likely scenario, and the idea that they need privacy or something to do whatever it is they need to do is purely the product of her own imagination. It’s projection. She tells herself that, and it sounds truer than her first thought. Truer than her instinct to flee. So she goes to the loft to find whatever it is she’ll find.

“In here,” he calls out from the bedroom before she’s even had time to wrestle her key from the lock.

There’s no follow-up to the words. He doesn’t come bustling out to take her coat and keys. He doesn’t come out to kiss her and offer wine and ice cream, a snack or something more substantial, a bath drawn to exactly the temperature she likes it. He doesn’t come bustling out at all, so she goes to him.

“Sorry,” he says over his shoulder as she slips from the shadows to the soft light of the bedroom. “Hands are full.”

They are. They’re full of a bloody mess of linens and towels. A sodden, reeking mess of a pillowcase and the pillow he doesn’t seem to know what to do with.

“Castle,” she says helplessly. Stupidly. “I forgot … I didn’t think …”

“Well now that you _are _thinking”—he pauses to heave everything except the pillow into a cheap plastic laundry basket she’s never seen before—“I’d welcome any and all ideas about how to get rid of this.” He looks down at the grisly heap, then up at her. “Can’t just toss it in the trash, right?”

He can, of course. It’s New York, the land of averted eyes and garbage barges. But he probably shouldn’t, for reasons practical and not-so-practical. She heaves a breath, trying to grab hold of so literal and unexpected a mess.

“Lanie won’t ask any questions,” she deadpans. She cocks her head, considering. “Well, not too many.”

“She won’t ask _you _any.” He frowns at the pillow. He turns it over and over again as if he’s looking for bloodstains, but it looks clean enough. How it _smells _is an entirely different matter. He tosses it on the top of the basket. “Me, she’ll put the screws to and enjoy every minute of it.”

“Maybe not today.” She studies him. “You’ve had a pretty rough day.”

“Rough.” He snorts as he moves toward the far side of the bed—_her_side of the bed, though that’s another side of this she hadn’t thought about—to continue with the clean up. “Entirely of my own making. I deserve no pity.”

“That’s not true,” she says. She sinks on to the corner of the bed—_his _side—and watches him search the floor and night table with brisk movements.

“Which part?” he asks from his knees.

He’s reaching under the bed, studying her face from an awkward angle, and she realizes she’s caught. He’s groping around for torn cloth and household tools smeared with his now-and-then father’s blood and still he’s managed to bring her around to what she’s doing here, what she was afraid she’d find here, and what she’s still afraid she’s brought with her.

“Both,” she sighs. 

“So I deserve _some _pity?” He hauls himself from the floor and drops on to the opposite corner of the bed. He reaches for her hand, then thinks better of it as they both regard the rust-red pile in basket on the floor between them. “Even though I lied to you?”

“Some.” She gives him a grim, grudging smile. “He manipulated you,” she adds, as much for herself as for him.

“He did. He’s … really good at it.” It sounds like the farthest thing from an excuse. He looks down at his hands, his fingernails tinged with drying blood. “And not that good.” He shakes his head. “Soft target.”

She nods down at her own knees. She knows, strangely, what that’s like—to have walls and boundaries and armor and still find yourself vulnerable to the most unexpected things. She thinks about Royce, about her dad when he was drinking. She thinks about the strange truth that the two of them—she and he—are alike in this unexpected way.

“It’s hard not to be,” she says. She reaches for his hand. She gives chase when he pulls back. She scoots close to him. She wraps an arm around his waist and rests her chin on his shoulder. “Sometimes it is.”

He gives in and curls his fingers around hers. He turns to bury his face in her hair.

“What do I do with this?” he asks in a small voice.

He means the bloody mess of towels and the ruined, stinking pillow. He means the cheap basket he must have bought on his way home. He means so many things.

“I don’t know,” she admits. “But we’ll figure it out.” 


	13. But a Whimper—Limelight (6 x 13)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His kid is crying down the phone line. Not his kid. His grown-up daughter is crying, and it’s a new and terrible thing. There’s no steadily rising pitch or words that crash into each other as they rush to make their way out into the world. There’s no trace of the little girl who used to work herself into a passion about one thing or another. Her words are distinct and measured, even though her voice is thick and clogged with painful pauses that he’s too dumbstruck to leap into. He makes the right noises, he hopes, and then it’s over.

> _“I don’t even remember getting messed up.”  
—Mandy Sutton, Limelight (6 x 13)_

* * *

His kid is crying down the phone line. Not his kid. His grown-up daughter is crying, and it’s a new and terrible thing. There’s no steadily rising pitch or words that crash into each other as they rush to make their way out into the world. There’s no trace of the little girl who used to work herself into a passion about one thing or another. Her words are distinct and measured, even though her voice is thick and clogged with painful pauses that he’s too dumbstruck to leap into. He makes the right noises, he hopes, and then it’s over.

She’s swallowing hard and drawing herself up. He can picture her, too many subway stops away, and he misses her fiercely, the little girl she was and the heartbroken young woman she is. She wills her voice steady and tells him that they’re still working out the details, but she wanted him to know. She hangs up with a brave, clipped, _Love you, too,_and it’s over.

He pads, unseeing, across the loft to the bedroom. He’s been pacing. He must have been pacing, useless and all but silent as his daughter cried down the phone line.

“You’re not going to believe …” He trails off, narrowly avoiding walking right into the foot of the bed.

Kate looks up from whatever she was definitely, studiously not reading. She pops a bookmark between almost certainly random pages and sets the book aside. She draws her knees up to sit cross-legged under the covers and holds out a hand to him.

“She broke up with him?”

The question mark is a courtesy. It’s a polite fiction, and he’s simultaneously startled and resigned. He takes her proffered hand and flops gracelessly on to the bed. “You knew.” He drags his body toward her. There’s an unpleasant combination of things darting around his insides. Hurt that he wasn’t the first to know. Self-flagellating certainty that he should have known. Abject fear that he missed something important, that he could have spared her this heartache if he’d just paid closer attention. “How?”

“I didn’t know.” She reassures him with quick fingers that stroke the hair back from his forehead so she can look him in the eye. “But I’m not surprised.”

“The Great Beckettini knows all,” he sighs. He nudges at her knee with his nose until she relents and lets him rest his head in her lap. “Why didn’t I know?”

“You were being good,” she says as though it’s obvious. “You were looking for the good.”

“And there was bad?” His spine stiffens. He moves to sit up but she presses at his shoulders. “I missed the bad?”

“Not bad.” She flicks his ear. “Nothing … actively bad.” His mouth opens on a panicked question about passive badness, but she shuts it with a warning look. “Just little things around the holidays.”

“She seemed tired?” He looks up for confirmation and gets a _maybe so_nod. “I didn’t want to say anything.” He turns to press a wry, unhappy smile against her skin. “I was being good.”

“You were being _very_good.” She rolls her eyes, but ducks her head to brush a kiss along his hairline. “But she did look tired.” She’s quiet for a few seconds. “Pi needs a lot of … upkeep.” She’s choosing her words carefully, and he kind of wishes she wouldn’t. He kind of wishes she’d open the door to the Pi pile-on a part of him is craving. “It loses its appeal after a while.”

“After a while?” he snorts. “Why was it appealing in the first place?”

“Who knows?” She shrugs. “Does that matter right now?”

There’s something in the way her emphasis falls, something hesitant in the glance she shoots his way. _The Great Beckettini knows all,_he thinks. Or at least she has some ideas about upkeep and appeal. She has some ideas about his kid who isn’t a kid anymore, and how this whole Pi mess happened in the first place, but she’s not inclined to share with the class at the moment.

“Not right now.” He shakes his head and seeks blindly above his head for her hands. She gives them willingly, and he settles the comfortable knot of them just under his chin. He takes a deep, deep breath and feels something loosen in his shoulders, his spine, his chest, even as his heart throbs painfully at the memory of unfamiliar tears. “Right now, it’s about the crying.”


	14. Headway—Dressed to Kill (6 x 14)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She lets him nag and torture and pester her about the dress. It’s well past dinner time, but they’re cooking anyway. He has editing to do, and she’s dead on her feet. She should try to sleep, but they’re both a little giddy. They both need to bleed off a little nervous energy about the fact that they’re doing this. They’re doing this.

> _“You need to get beyond the fairytale treacle aspect.”  
—Martha Rodgers, Dressed to Kill (6 x 14) _

* * *

She lets him nag and torture and pester her about the dress. It’s well past dinner time, but they’re cooking anyway. He has editing to do, and she’s dead on her feet. She should try to sleep, but they’re both a little giddy. They both need to bleed off a little nervous energy about the fact that they’re doing this. They’re _doing _this.

“It’s white, though, right? Traditional.” He deftly see-saws the chef’s knife down the length of whatever vegetable it is he’s working on. He nods to himself as though that’s settled.

“Oh, definitely white,” she says, stone faced as she runs water over greens heaped high in the salad spinner bowl she has balanced in the bottom of the sink. “Traditional. That’s me.”

“Definitely white,” he mutters. His knife goes still a second later. He shoots her a dirty look over his shoulder. “Wait. Not white. Not traditional. You’re not _traditional. _It could be any color.”

“Any color,” she agrees. She lifts the colander insert out of the bowl and hefts it high in the air, enjoying the music of the water pattering against the bowl and the steel sink bottom. “Or it could be white. Which isn’t really a color.”

“Why won’t you tell me?” he grumbles. His knife work loses its rhythm. It hits the cutting board with erratic, overzealous_thwocks. _“Why won’t you even give me a hint?”

He uses the flat of the knife to slide the diced and minced and sliced vegetables into the big sauté pan on the stove. She turns to enjoy the bright, tumbling colors hissing as they hit the oil.

“I have given you a hint. I’ve given you _several _hints.” She turns back to the task at hand, dumping the water and setting the mostly drained greens back into the bowl. She starts the internal countdown until he crowds up against her. Until he invades her space and tries to seduce her into giving something away. _Four, three … _

“It doesn’t have bib overalls and there’s no alpaca involved.” He runs ahead of her silent calculation. He nuzzles the back of her neck and makes her shiver. He gives her hip a pinch. “These are not hints.”

“They are though.” She leans back into him for the briefest of moments. She breathes in the end-of-day scent of him and the aroma of a late-night meal. She presses a palm to the effervescent joy pushing up against her ribs. “When we know who or when or _what _things are not, that’s evidence, too.” She ducks under his arm with her bowl of greens in tow. “Have you learned _nothing _in all these years, Castle?”

He tries to catch her around the waist, but she fends him off with an elbow. She banishes him to the stove top where his neglected vegetables are in jeopardy. He’s preoccupied, then. They both are with the hum and sizzle of the here-and-there tasks they have down to a science, but it doesn’t stop him from muttering, murmuring, mumbling, grumbling as she teases and taunts and leads him on a merry chase.

“Done,” he declares suddenly. Smugly. He dances behind her again. He reaches around her body to indicate the bowl heaped with the simple pasta he’s tossed together with vegetables and a little cheese. He laughs as he presses a hand to her rumbling stomach. “I probably deserve a prize for being done first.” 

“You do.” She bumps him out of the way of the drawer she needs to get into. She fishes out the tongs and gestures with them to the glossy spread of magazines littering the dining room table. “You get to clear those up so we can eat.”

He grumbles again. He mutters and mopes and murmurs, but he sets himself to the task, and she sets herself to hers. Tossing the salad, ferrying things out to the table to take up residence in the spaces he’s just made. It has a comfortable rhythm to it. It rolls beneath the pop and fizz of excitement they’re both running on tonight.

And it has something more tonight. It has the wonderful feeling of forward motion, progress toward something she _wants _unreservedly, now that she’s met and named the logical, natural, inevitable melancholy she’s been living with when it comes to the wedding. She misses her mom. It hurts—everything about this is going to hurt more than a little because she can’t share it with her. But tonight, they are all forward motion until she carries the last dish out and realizes he’s standing there with the heftiest of Martha’s wedding magazines clutched in his hands.

“Are you sorry to miss it?” he asks in a key utterly different from the bantering, pestering questions he’s peppered her with all night.“I know you said the dress is amazing”—he rolls his eyes—“and not alpaca.” He turns the cover outward so the lovestruck bride is tucked against his chest. “And I know it wouldn’t be the same without your mom. But will you miss … grabbing your best friend and spending every weekend trying on a million dresses?”

He looks up at her through his lashes. It’s aching, wistful. Everything about this is going to hurt more than a little for him, too. He’s taken up some of the burden now that he knows, because that’s how this goes. They’re _doing _this.

She sets down the last dish. She goes to him and strips the magazine from his arms. She tosses it aside and winds her arms around his neck.

“My best friend?” She flashes him a sly look. “Castle, if you really want to try on a million dresses, we can go try on a million dresses.”

“Uh, I think I’m good,” he says. The smile that spreads across his face is giddy. It’s pure, fizzing joy. His palms slide up her back. He holds her tight and he whispers against her lips. “I’m definitely good.”


	15. Glory Days—Smells Like Teen Spirit (6 x 15)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He hasn’t quite managed to convince her to make out with him under the bleachers, but that’s at least partly because they’re the wrong kind of bleachers. They’re micro-collapsible or something and electronically controlled so they snug away right up against the wall. They’re covered in gauzy fabric at the moment, anyway, and they probably cost several million dollars. He’s willing to bet that when they unfurl, they’re made entirely of gleaming brass donor plaques. So, failure to launch on Operation Bleacher Make-Out is, like, ninety percent attributable to bleachers that absolutely belong in a super villain’s deep sea volcano lair.

> _“I had to get away from Faircroft.”  
—Jordan Gibbs, Smells Like Teen Spirit (6 x 15) _

* * *

He hasn’t quite managed to convince her to make out with him under the bleachers, but that’s at least partly because they’re the wrong kind of bleachers. They’re micro-collapsible or something and electronically controlled so they snug away right up against the wall. They’re covered in gauzy fabric at the moment, anyway, and they probably cost several million dollars. He’s willing to bet that when they unfurl, they’re made entirely of gleaming brass donor plaques. So, failure to launch on Operation Bleacher Make-Out is, like, ninety percent attributable to bleachers that absolutely belong in a super villain’s deep sea volcano lair.

He almost doesn’t mind, though, because what’s come out of the evening is as great—very _nearly _as great—as the thought of making out with her in a high school gym location to be named later.

“You _wrote _poetry?” he repeats for what might be the sixth time. “You didn’t just _go _to a poetry slam. You … you personally slammed your own poetry?”

His imagination works overtime on the information. He scans the sea of teenagers desperate not to look like teenagers and tries to find her counterpart. His eye travels over satin and sequins and clinging matte-black fabric. He tries to imagine what she’d wear, how she’d hold her body, what the proto–Beckett Glare might have looked like.

“Yes, Castle. My own poetry,” she says in clipped, metallic words. She turns to him. She plants an elbow on the unsteady cafe table they’ve settled into and drops her chin into the cupped palm of her hand. “You want me to tell you all about it before I kill you for making fun?”

“Making fun?” His head swivels from the dance floor crowed toward her. The Beckett Glare definitely has the latest updates installed. He’s aghast. “I’m not.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “I would never. I’m just … surprised.”

He reaches for her free hand, but she’s prickly about taking it. Her nails curl hard into her palm. Her shoulders take up a defensive posture before she relents and slides her palm over his to interlace their fingers.

“I got over it quick.” She studies the table. It’s wrapped up like candy in the same gauze that’s everywhere. She plucks at the fabric in a nervous gesture that’s not like her. Not like present-day her, anyway. She catches herself, though. She senses the danger or however it is that she sees this trip down memory lane and stills the tell-tale hand that isn’t holding his. She fixes him with a sly look. “In case you’re worried about the competition.”

“Poetry competition?” he laughs. He pictures the laborious flourishes of his handwriting filling the pages of notebooks tucked away in the darkest, _darkest _corners of his bookshelves. The lines he was most proud of back in the day—the lines he finds the most clanging and cringe-inducing today—fill his head with cruel readiness. “In poetry, as in most things, I am absolutely sure you’d kick my ass.” 

_“Most _things?” It’s bravado—the swagger in her voice, the pointed look. She counteracts it with a squeeze of his fingers, but he gets the sense that she’s relieved, that it’s mission accomplished so far as tugging them safely back into the here and now goes.

It’s probably for the best. He squeezes back as he looks out again at the seething crowd of high emotion and thinks it’s almost certainly for the best to leave the painful, awkward past behind. It’s for the best, but his desire for her—all of her—gets the better of him.

“Do you still have it?” he blurts. “Any of it?” Her eyes open wide. There’s panic behind them, and he backpedals at speed. The last thing he wants to do tonight is chase her off. “Never … never mind, I’m—”

“I burned it.” The words come out swiftly. Her cheeks flush in the twinkling, ice-blue lights and feels her palm suddenly burning in his. She’s withering—absolutely _withering u_nder the memory. “The night before I left for Stanford. I burned … a ton things. Very dramatic” She hangs her head for a long moment. He thinks she’s done, but the words keep coming, slower now. “I just wanted to be done with it.” She traces a fingertip over the tabletop, a message to her former self that he’d love to read. “Now, I regret some of the things I missed, but then I just wanted to be done, you know?” 

She meets his eyes suddenly. It’s not rhetorical. She’s really asking, and he feels just as caught out as she must. He looks inward. He looks away. His eyes find Lucas and Jordan swaying on the dance floor, not quite sharing shy smiles. He thinks about his own stupid prank and wishes his own motives had been as noble as those of the young man talking with the girl he likes in stilted bursts, but really, she’s captured it for him, her and now.

He just wanted to be done with this place—with its cliques and bullies and the tortured logic that came with shocking amounts of money. He wanted to be done with the exhausting work of making the case for himself as the funniest, the most daring, the most willing to take the blame for everything. 

“I do. I definitely know.” He pushes to his feet and tugs her up along with him. It’s a smooth gesture, miraculously. It ends with her flush against him and his arm around her waist. “The good news is we are done with it. Let’s go home and be done with it.” 

“Home?” She laughs up at him. She arches her spine and sways so he has to catch her almost in a dip. “Thought you wanted to make out under the bleachers, Castle.”

“Bleachers,” he scoffs as he lifts their hands high. He spins her under his arm and maneuvers toward the doors. “Who needs them?”


	16. Loquacious—Room 147 (6 x 16)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She thinks of them as talkers—him, Alexis, Martha. In the early days it exhausted her—and charmed her, though she was loath to admit it. The constant back-and-forth, the unending sharing and analysis of every emotion, interaction, proposition was both foreign and fascinating, because really, they—the Rodgers–Castle clan—are only talkers by comparison.

> _“What I’m struck by is your total lack of curiosity.”   
—Richard Castle, Room 147 (6 x 16) _

* * *

She thinks of them as talkers—him, Alexis, Martha. In the early days it exhausted her—and charmed her, though she was loath to admit it. The constant back-and-forth, the unending sharing and analysis of every emotion, interaction, proposition was both foreign and fascinating, because really, they—the Rodgers–Castle clan—are only talkers by comparison. 

She and her dad exist at the other extreme. They are _not_talkers. They never were, really, and even her mom was generally inclined to keep her own counsel, and without her, in the aftermath of her murder, well … the Beckett family as it exists today is not exactly overrun with talkers.

She knows, too, that it’s not even as simple as that on either end. She knows from painful, bumbling experience that not every thought that floats through the transom of his mind finds expression. In the last five years, she’s counted too often on there being nothing that he doesn’t say right out loud, and even now, waiting for him to speak is a bad habit she’s too prone to fall back on when there’s work she ought to be the one to do.

All of that is uppermost in her mind tonight.

Alexis is home. She’s come home, and the loft has been alive with chatter all evening. Martha has materialized, though she was supposed to be away for another few days, and the three of them talk and talk and talk. She—Kate—joins in as best she can, but she’s no match for them. Her jaw aches, her head feels full, mostly pleasantly full, so she sits back and watches. She examines just how sloppy her assumptions are.

Alexis, for example, is not a talker tonight. She’s playing the role of one. She’s throwing herself into the conversation and laughing till her cheeks are red. She reaches for her grandmother’s hand, for her father’s, and even for Kate’s a few times. She is bright and engaging and deft at steering the conversation clear of things that are very much on her mind, things it’s not yet the time to talk about.

Martha comes to her aid, again and again. Castle, of course, wants to know everything. He wants a minute-by-minute account of his daughter’s life. He wants an inventory of her thoughts, her feelings, her opinions, but Martha plays the fool as needed. She plays up her self-involvement when his voracious curiosity leads the conversation into dangerous waters.

It’s complex, Kate realizes. They are, this is. It’s not about talkers and not talkers. It’s an intricate web, and she’s part of it. She’s part of this, and there’s work she ought to be the one to do.

“I’m exhausted,” she declares with an overblown yawn. It comes smack dab in the middle of things. Castle advances, Alexis sidesteps, and she yawns hugely. It’s a ploy. It’s an assist for Martha and running interference for Alexis. They share a conspiratorial glance, the three of them. “Castle, I’m exhausted and Martha’s been driving and Alexis_just_got home …”

“Are you saying someone needs to take you to bed, Detective?” he asks with an over the top leer. Alexis and Martha both respond with vaudeville-level theatricality.

“I’ve _been _saying it,” Kate struggles to her feet and tugs him along. “If only you’d listen once in a while.”

He picks up on the cue this time. He looks a little chastened as he pulls her up from the couch. He doesn’t take her to bed, not right away, of course. There are hugs and huddles and murmured assertions that it’s good to have her home, it’s good to be home, it’s good, it’s good, it’s good, and chastened or not, he still has tight hold of the conversational thread as they make their way into the bedroom.

“I knew I’d wear her down,” he says with a self-satisfied smile as he works on the buttons of his shirt. He steps out of sight to toss it in the bathroom hamper, then pops back into view, his face furrowed with concern. “Do you think I just wore her down? Because I want her home, but I don’t want her home just because_I _want her home. I want her to _want_to be home.”

She pauses with her own shirt trapping her elbows. “I think she wants to be home,” she says, trying to find the narrow path between truth and keeping Alexis’s confidence. “She seems like she wants to be.”

“It’s just so sudden. I mean, yesterday, she was all about leases and mysterious ‘other reasons,’ and then today …” He’s abandoned the project of getting undressed entirely. He’s pacing with one shirt tail out. He stops in his tracks and turns to her, his concern blooming into full-on worry. “You don’t think something happened, do you? She’d tell me if she got mugged or someone broke in or …”

“I talked to her,” she blurts. She clutches her button-down to her chest like she can duck behind it as needed. “Nothing happened.” She hears her own words and realizes they’re only true so far as she knows. “I don’t think so anyway. I just … I talked to her.”

“You got her to come home?”

It’s complex, she thinks again as she studies his face. There’s surprise there, and that’s not entirely flattering, but there’s dawning gratitude, too, and she’s certain she doesn’t deserve it. And on top of all that, there’s something a little closed off—something that might be jealousy or close kin to it. It makes her tired. All this work makes her tired.

“I didn’t get her to do anything.” She drops her shirt on the bed and follows it down. She sinks heavily to the mattress. “I just talked to her to make sure she wasn’t _not _coming home because of me.”

“Because of you?” he scoffs reflexively at the idea, but other thoughts follow hard on. She sees surprise, guilt, concern, apology all flitting across his face as he comes to sit beside her. “Because of you. Kate. Yesterday. I was just thinking out loud. I never thought—”

“I know.” She flops backward to lie down with her feet hanging off the end of the bed. She tugs at him, urging him down, too. “I know you didn’t think that. But I thought … it might be that.”

“What did she say?” he asks.

It’s guarded. It’s not the voracious curiosity of earlier, but she treads lightly anyway.

“We cleared the air,” she says. “Why she didn’t come home before, why she did now—it’s not because of me.”

“Not because of you,” he repeats. She watches his face in profile now and sees him struggling, too. She sees him trying even harder than her to keep on the narrow path. He sighs and scrubs a hand over his face. He tips his head toward her. “Think she’ll ever tell me why?”

“She might,” she says. She’d like to give him more than that. She considers the evidence and decides she can. “She probably will.” She rolls on her side and kisses the frown lines on his forehead. “Castles are talkers.”


	17. Aftermath—In the Belly of the Beast (6 x 17)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I showered at the precinct.” Her tone is flat with exhaustion, shock, resignation. With all of the above.

> _“I can feel the panic in your soul.”   
—Vulcan Simmons, In the Belly of the Beast (6 x 17)_

* * *

“I showered at the precinct.” Her tone is flat with exhaustion, shock, resignation. With all of the above.

“I’m not going to dignify that with a reply.” He lifts the hideous green blanket from her shoulders and wonders how it managed to follow them home. He thinks about burning it for warmth. For catharsis. 

“That’s a reply.” Her wan smile tugs his attention back from the cheap fabric. Back to her and what she needs. 

“But not a dignifying one.” He does his best to smile, too, but it’s hard. It’s the next thing to impossible, given how he’s spent the last twelve hours. “Let me get a look at you, Kate.”

She nods. She drops her hands to her sides and lets him guide her into the bathroom. The tight grip she’s had on herself—that she’s had to have to keep herself alive—slips away with every step. She’s shivering, still shivering hard, and he feels like a monster as he eases her out of the oversized spare clothes Ryan had scared up for her at the precinct.

He tries for stoic as each new piece of the story of how _she’s_spent the last twelve hours comes to light on the canvas of her skin—each bruise and bloody scrape, each throbbing, swollen knot, each gash revealed to the soundtrack of her wet, rattling cough. He tries for blank-faced neutrality, but as he helps her step free from the pooled sweatpants at her feet and rises from the tile floor, their eyes meet in the mirror. He’s failing.

“You’ve seen worse.”

She flashes her teeth, a savage smile this time. He tries again to return it, but he’s not sure it’s true. Her skin is mottled and tinged blue all over. She’s huddled into herself, shivering to the point that he can see cords of muscle twitching in her neck, along her spine, down the backs of her knees. He thinks of the terrible aftermath of Cole Maddox, of her body in the white shock of lightning and the mellow bedroom light, and he’s not sure he’s seen worse.

He sidesteps. “Let’s get you warm.”

He holds on to her as he reaches for the shower’s silver lever. She’s not objecting. She’s as disinclined to let go of him as he is of her, though she startles at the first hiss of water. She flinches as it drums against the tile and echoes through the bathroom. 

“Shower.” Her voice is faint, and he’s not sure if it’s a plea or a reminder to herself of where she is—a needed anchor to here and now or liberation from there and then. 

“Shower. That’s right.” He looks down at himself and realizes he’s still dressed. His jeans are spattered to the knees. “I need to get undressed, okay?”

He slowly withdraws his hand from hers. She looks stricken at the loss of contact, and he gets it. She’s inches away, and it’s not enough. He wants to tell her to step into the open stall. That he’ll join her in two seconds, but it’s impossible. He strips down, clumsy and almost one handed as they each reach out again and again to be sure of one another.

Her eyes go wide as he coaxes her beneath the water’s spray.

“Too hot?” He lunges for the handle, but she shakes her head vehemently.

“No,” she tells him through chattering teeth. “Sore. Everything.” She arches her back. Her mouth falls open as the water sluices over a broader expanse of her skin. “Hurts, but it’s good.”

“Good,” he repeats.

They navigate together. _Turn. Turn, Kate. Duck under. Ok, good. That’s good. _He lets the water break first against his own body, shoulders, chest, so it falls more gently on her skin.

_Shampoo? Yes,_she tells him longingly and she sits on the tile ledge, docile with her hands in her lap as his fingers work carefully over her scalp and through her hair.

_Soap? _He asks, then tells._Soap_. He can see dirt ground into the abrasions at the small of her back, places she couldn’t have reached with her banged-up shoulders, elbows, wrists. He lathers his palms and works quickly, as gently as he can, a stream of _Sorry_s on his lips as constant as the fall of water as her muscles seize up every time he finds a new, painful place.

“Done, Kate,” he says at last. He cranks off the water.

“Oh.” She blinks at him, startled again by the sudden silence. She looks down at herself. She looks at her arms, her belly, her thighs, her ribcage, glistening and rosy with the heat of the water. “That’s better.”

“Thought so.” He pushes a little smugness into his tone and she tries for a glare. She misses. They both miss, but there are hopeful signs.

He reaches for a towel. For two, for three. She’s still shivering as he drapes one over her shoulders and tries, clumsily, to knot a second around her waist.

“Let me,” she says with a frown. She bats his hands away, and with still-shaking fingers, she manages some sleight of hand with the thick fabric so it stays put, resting on her hips.

“Cape. Sarong.” He regards her with mock gravity. “It’s a bold look.”

“Need a turban to really pull it off.” She cracks a smile and, with difficulty, holds the third towel out toward him.

He moves to take it from her. He reaches for it, but something crumbles in each of them before he can take hold. She launches herself at him. He catches her, paralyzed at first by the possibility of hurting her—the possibility of causing her yet more pain—but she’s clinging to him, skin to bare skin as the towels drop inelegantly to the damp floor. He lets his arms come tight around her. 

“I was scared, Castle.” The words brand his skin. “I was so scared.”

“Me too,” he breathes. “Terrified.”   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hmmm. This was supposed to be something else, but it wouldn’t be that. As ever, I’m not the one who drives the bus. Don’t Let the Brain Poneh Drive the Bus.


	18. Sortie—The Way of the Ninja (6 x 18)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It starts out as a joke. For once, his phone is not on his person. It’s out in the open, and she can’t resist grabbing it. She has to work fast, because he’s already calling out to ask if she’s seen it, so she taps in the first silly thing that comes to mind.

> _“So this is a classic revenge story.”  
—Richard Castle, The Way of the Ninja (6 x 18) _

* * *

It starts out as a joke. For once, his phone is not on his person. It’s out in the open, and she can’t resist grabbing it. She has to work fast, because he’s already calling out to ask if she’s seen it, so she taps in the first silly thing that comes to mind.

_Dry cleaning. Lipstick Shirt, plus all of Kate’s. _

She sets the alarm for bright and early Sunday morning. _So_bright and early, because she’s forgiven him for not extracting her from the Dread Carly Mire in timely fashion, but that doesn’t mean a little penance won’t do him good.

She feigns sleep when it goes off. She keeps her eyes shut and her breathing as steady as she can while he fumbles for it and practically rolls out of bed. She presses her lips together to keep from laughing as he mutters and stomps around the bedroom, then dozes off again when he actually heads for the shower.

He doesn’t say anything about it. Her clothes simply appear on her side of the closet, relieved of their plastic bags and cheap wire hangers. He wears the offending shirt the first chance he gets. She leaves some lipstick marks of her own the first chance she gets.

That’s just Phase One.

She gives it a few days before she picks his pocket. She’s been mulling over Phase Two in the back of her mind, but inspiration strikes when she spies him through the break room window, washing mugs.

She takes some pity on him. She sets the alarm to go off when she’ll be about midway through her Saturday morning run. She drops in an address this time, a park just far enough from the loft that it’s penance, too.

_Replace NYPD Property (Mug). _

He trots up, trying not to spill his coffee, or more importantly, hers. He’s more than a little disheveled, but then again, she’s more than a little sweaty and sore. He smiles at her and takes her free hand without comment.

They wind their way through the sparse collection of stalls. It’s early for an outdoor fair, and the spring air is on the unpleasant side of brisk. They bicker a little as they both wait for the caffeine to kick in, but they find a couple of mugs, far nicer than the one lost to his Indisputable Ninja Test. They assume a place of honor in the break room. 

Phase Three kind of takes on a life of its own.

She thinks back to Phase One and how, eventually, she stopped yelling at him and used her Big Girl words to say what was really worrying her. She thinks back to Carly and her boring life. She thinks about fancy, exclusive restaurants they’re always saying they want to try and seldom get around to. She sets her sights on one of those, but things take a turn when she goes to use his phone to call in a favor or two.

She grabs her own phone instead and calls her dad. She hums him a few bars about a restaurant she barely remembers. It was some kind of hole in the wall, but she knows her mom loved it—her parents loved it. Her dad knows the one. They reminisce quietly, and it’s crushing when he tells her that the place has long since been shuttered.

Phase Three almost sputters out, then, but the Ghost of Carly’s Discontent drives her on. She researches and finds that the couple who ran the place have kids in the business. They have a hole in the wall a few blocks from the one she remembers. When he’s in the shower, she sets an early evening alarm on a school night.

_Operation Culinary Novelty. _

She makes the reservation for three. It’s short notice, and she half expects her spontaneity-averse father to decline, but he doesn’t. The food is incredible and the ambiance grows on them. Her dad tells stories she knows and stories she doesn’t. The three of them end up having a meal together that’s more relaxed and pleasant than any she can remember. 

Phase Four is where the whole scheme was always heading.

She buys a dress with a highly strategic sash. Its silky fabric criss-crosses her body, and it has more sequins than any item of clothing she’s ever owned, which is to say it has a smattering of sequins along the edging.

She thinks about hunting down some expensive sake, but decides against it. Phase Four is bespoke penance. She noses around the stores of wine at the loft unabashedly and branches out from there. Something new, but in the neighborhood of what they both love already.

Phase Four requires more preparation on her part, and he’s gotten canny by that point. He checks his phone obsessively, and she has to enlist Martha to set the alarm right before he heads off to a meeting at Black Pawn. 

_Tea for Two, _she tells her. She blushes under Martha’s knowing look.

It’s a mad dash once she gets Martha’s_Mission Accomplished _text. She dithers over the distribution of the cheesy paper lanterns. She hauls the big ottoman out from in front of the couch. She lays down a foundation of pillows and covers it with red satin sheets.

She piles her hair high on her head and shoves hair sticks through the curled mess. She gets herself into the dress, and it’s down to the wire. She can hear his footsteps in the hall as she sets the bottle of wine and the glasses on the lacquered tray. His key is in the door as she arranges herself artfully against the red satin backdrop.

It’s worth the effort. His jaw drops as he takes in the scene. Whatever smart-ass comment he was about to make dies on his lips. She throws her head back, letting the dress slip open a little further.

“Would you like to buy some private time?”


	19. Procedure—The Greater Good (6 x 19)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We should burn the old ones,” he declares.

> _“There’s a history.”   
—Victoria Gates, The Greater Good (6 x 19) _

* * *

“We should burn the old ones,” he declares.

They’re sitting on opposite ends of the couch. Her feet are in his lap. His toes tickle her hips from time to time as they pass the legal pad back and forth, free associating and scrawling down names. It feels like they’ve been at this forever. They’ve made some progress, but his knee is stiffening and his butt is going numb. He excavates his own first-draft list from between the cushions.

“Burn them?” She laughs and grabs him by the big toe, thwarting his attempt to extricate himself from the couch. She’s dangerously head down about the list. “What is it with you and fire?”

“I find it cathartic.” He shrugs. “Besides, shouldn’t our joint stream of consciousness approach be an entirely fresh start?”

He lunges forward to make a grab for her handwritten list, but through some dizzyingly quick move, she not only holds on, she manages to snatch his away to boot.

“Version control.” Her tone leaves no doubt on where they’ve landed: There will be no fiery catharsis tonight. “We hold on to everything.”

She uncaps the pen in her hand and scrawls the date and a oversized _1.0 _across the top of his crumpled, typewritten pages. She lifts the top sheet of the legal pad with her own _1.0 _to tuck his list away, but something freezes her in the act.

“Evelyn,” she says faintly. She taps the name with the point of her pen and runs a fingernail underneath it. “They were on my list, too. Her and the kids.” A pained flick of a smile crosses her face. “That’s another few down. Missed that.”

“Probably because your list isn’t alphabetical.” He teases her gently. “Pretty sloppy, Beckett.”

_“I’m_sloppy?” She tugs his big toe again, answering in kind. “Yours is only alphabetical because you’re, like, a million chapters behind on the book, and you were procrastinating.” She shuffles the page out of sight then pulls it out again. “They’re old enough to bring dates,” she says, blotting out the number in parentheses after Evelyn’s name with her thumb.

“They are.” He follows her lead in the absence of any real sense of how to talk about this—another raw, painful gap left by a man who played such a huge, complex role in her life, in their story. “There goes our headway on numbers.”

“There it goes.” She lets out a soft laugh, but her attention is still on the page. “I miss him a lot lately.” She shakes her head and tosses the legal pad on to the coffee table. The loose white sheets fan artfully out from beneath the yellow. “I miss …” She closes her eyes. Her head falls back, and she takes a shaky breath. “I miss the kind of Captain he was.”

“The kind of Captain?” he asks carefully. They don’t talk about this. They talk about Roy—his friend, her mentor—but never about Captain Montgomery. “Not like Gates, you mean.”

She doesn’t answer at first. She lifts a shoulder in a gesture that’s half dismissive, half defensive, and he thinks that means he’s supposed to let it go. But she untangles herself suddenly. She draws her knees in and dives under his arm.

“Not like Gates.” She sighs as she settles herself against his chest. He feels the slight weight of her body and the enormous burden of everything else. Grief and anger. Loss and the threat she lives under—a threat that looms so much closer now than it did just a little while ago. “Like her sister.”

_Not that bad,_he thinks again. He winces this time. He thinks of Peter Cordero and Hector Núñez of all people. He thinks of motive and means and the myriad ways of moving through the world—the myriad ways of doing good and being family and just living.

“It’s not always either–or,” he says at last. “There’s a lot of ground in between.”

“A lot of ground.” She sounds far away, but then she tips her head back to look up at him. “Easy to get lost.”

“Alone maybe.” He kisses her forehead. “But it’s a joint effort now.”


	20. Can You Dig It?—That 70s Show (6 x 20)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone is satisfied with Martha’s magnificent project.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This one comes with a total cheese warning, and if it doesn’t make much sense, I apologize. I ran a 5K in a thunderstorm this morning after a night of total insomnia, so my brain is even less functional than usual. 

> _“I have searched high and low trying to capture the look that is the essence of you.”  
—Martha Rodgers, That ‘70s Show (6 x 20)_

* * *

Everyone is satisfied with Martha’s magnificent project.

The woman herself is positively preening over the execution of something its scope with such limited resources. Castle is patting himself on the back for a filial job well done and laughing over his mother’s foibles and excesses with the boys, with Alexis, with anyone who’ll listen, so it’s a two-for victory there. It’s the talk of the precinct break room, and even Captain Gates is effusively satisfied with a glass of Glitterati champagne in her, then satisfied in more subdued, professional terms the next day when the kudos start rolling in for unexpectedly closing such a high-profile case.

It’s an unqualified success, at least in hindsight, and Kate knows she has every reason to close the book on it. She has every reason to breathe a sigh of relief and check the _Make Martha Feel Included_box on her wedding to-do list. Or she would have every reason to check it if she had such a list and such a box.

But something doesn’t quite sit right about the … outsourcing or whatever you’d call it. She can’t quite reconcile herself to the idea of throwing his mother—her soon to be mother-in-law and the woman who’s been more to her than that for some time now—a bone like that and calling it good. At the same time, though, she’s not wild about doing emotional labor that’s on his side of the fence. Or would be on his side of the fence if there were emotional labor to do, which everyone else seems to agree there isn’t, so she doesn’t quite know what to do with that.

So she invites Martha for tea. Not coffee, which seems too mundane. Not dinner, which seems too formal, but late afternoon tea on a day when he’s tied up with meetings and there’s nothing going on with her case that Ryan and Esposito can’t handle for an hour or so.

Martha sweeps into Bosie a few minutes late. There are air kisses and assurances that meeting up on short notice is no trouble, that she’s sure whatever Kate has ordered will be fabulous, and that she’s delighted to have some one-on-one time with her daughter to be. A little small talk follows, then silence.

It falls so suddenly, so completely that Kate blinks. She realizes how much of the heavy lifting Martha has been doing as she, herself, belatedly tries to organize her thoughts, her motives, her needs. The arrival of their service for two buys her a few precious seconds. She hides—actually hides—behind the tower. Her gaze falls on the brown bread, the tiny triangles of sandwiches. She has a flash of memory—Castle’s impression of Gates complaining about her own mother-in-law—and what she wants to say suddenly presents itself on a trill of laughter.

“Martha, I need your help with something.” She snags a macaron and nibbles at the edge of it. “A wedding present for Castle.”

“Well!” Martha’s expression is half hidden behind her tea cup. “That_is _ambitious.”

“I know.” She toys with her own cup and saucer. “I mean, he can buy himself whatever he wants.” She thinks about Boba Fett and Linus and his breathtakingly detailed model of the Brooklyn Bridge. “What could I possibly give him?” She deflates. She bites into the macaron like she’s got a life-long grudge against it. “It’s stupid, right?

“Not stupid at all, Darling. It’s lovely.” Martha reaches past the tower of pastries and finger sandwiches to cover Kate’s hand with her own. She smiles and her eyes are a little bright. “But I think the only thing—the_only_thing—Richard wants in this world is you.” 

“Me,” she repeats. She’s blushing and thrilled down to her toes. She’s squirming with self-conscious embarrassment and excitement as a hundred moments—a hundred ideas—flood her mind. She squeezes Martha’s hand. “That’s perfect. Martha, thank you. _Thank you.”_

“Thank you?” Martha laughs, surprised. “Well, you won’t find me turning down credit for anything, but I don’t see how that’s any help at all.”

“It is, though,” Kate assures her. 

The rest of their afternoon passes in a pleasant blur. Martha regales her with acting tragedies and triumphs within the ranks at the precinct. Kate tells the story of Harold and Vince’s forbidden love, and they sigh over it together. They part ways on the street with more air kisses and laughing acknowledgment that they’ll see each other at the loft in a few hours.

“I may be a little late,” Kate says. “Cover for me?”

“Richard won’t get nothin’ outta me, kiddo.” Martha gives her a wink. “Mostly because there’s nothing to get.”

Kate hits the precinct with urgent purpose. Ryan and Esposito blink in surprise. They toil along in her wake and they break the case. She leaves the confession and the deal-making to the boys and calls to give her dad the heads up that she’s on her way.

He has them ready by the time she arrives, boxes and photo albums stacked, an assortment of snapshots spread out across his dining room table. They’re organized, of course. They’re chronological and divided by subject. They’re labeled:_Johanna, Jim, J & J, Katie, K & J & J, K & J. _

“Thanks, Dad.” She hugs him hard.

“Anything for my girl.” He smiles, but she sees the toll it’s taken to gather all this up, pieces of her mother’s life and his own, their life as a family, before and after her mother. “But what’s this all about?” 

“A wedding present. For Castle.” She blushes. She’s shy and squirming and embarrassed and excited again. She’s overwhelmed. “I want—I thought I’d put together a book for him. I want to start at the beginning.”

“The beginning.” His hand twitches toward the album labeled Johanna. it falls away. “Well.” He shakes himself. “Would you like some help?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Some help would be great, Dad.” 


	21. Some Assembly Required—Law and Boarder (6 x 21)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He high-tails it away from Ryan and Esposito as soon as humanly possible. He rushes to find her wherever filing fictional reports might have taken her, and he’s never been so happy in his life to see that she’s parked on the chairs just around the bend from the bullpen with everything they both need to make a break for it.

> _“It’s your day.”  
—Javier Esposito, Law and Boarder (6 x 21) _

* * *

He high-tails it away from Ryan and Esposito as soon as humanly possible. He rushes to find her wherever filing fictional reports might have taken her, and he’s never been so happy in his life to see that she’s parked on the chairs just around the bend from the bullpen with everything they both need to make a break for it.

“How’d your ‘little man chat’ go?” She smirks as she makes a behind-the-back stab to light up the elevator’s down button.

“Awkward,” he says in a low voice. He looks around as though the boys might be following with an eye to launching a second uncomfortable assault. “Extremely awkward.”

“Did they cry when they realized that neither one of them was getting a rose?” She’s laughing, but she manages to pair it with a dirty look as he takes her arm a little too roughly and hustles her into the elevator once it finally—_finally_—arrives.

“You _knew?” _he hisses.

“That the two of them were throwing elbows at each other and sucking up to you so you’d ask one of them to be your best man?” She looks at him like they’re sharing a joke. Then she looks at him like they’re not sharing a joke. She looks at him like he’s an idiot. “You _didn’t _know?”

“No, I didn’t know.” He feels his ears go hot. He_feels_like an idiot, so at least they’re on the same page about that. “That’s why I _asked _what was going on with them.”

“I didn’t think you were serious.” The elevator bumps to a stop on the ground floor. She shakes her head as she leads the way out into the lobby. “I thought you just wanted to brag about how you were playing them off each other.”

“I wasn’t playing anyone off of anything,” he insists in a voice far too loud for anywhere, let alone the glassed-in side of the lobby. The head of the usually bored desk sergeant swings their way. He takes her arm again and ratchets the volume down. “I … why would they be fighting over _that?”_

“Over being Best Man for world-famous novelist Richard Castle?” She puts air quotes around the title, and for some reason, it makes him squirm. Not the air quotes or the slightly unflattering imitation of him she’s also deployed. It’s the explanation—how obvious it is now that she’s pulled back the curtain—that makes him squirm.

“World famous. Yeah. That.” He pushes open the door to the street and ushers her through. “Makes sense.”

“Castle.” She gives him an odd, side-long look as they strike out toward the subway. “They’re just competitive idiots. I’m sure they’re over it already.” 

“Yeah. Of course they are.” He waves it off. He shoves his hands in his pockets and forces his body into a posture that’s beyond casual. He locks it down so he’s not _visibly _squirming at least. “Probably should let them off the groomsmen hook, too. Stupid to make them rent tuxes and the whole thing.”

“Hook?” The look she gives them this time is more than side-long. She stops in her tracks and lets the tractor beam of it pull him around to face her. “Castle, what are you talking about?”

“I mean—I thought—” He stammers. “They just looked let down when I told them Alexis was my Best Man, and I felt … on the spot, so I asked them to be groomsmen. Stupid, though. Not like they need a consolation prize.”

“It’s not stupid.” She starts walking again.“Just because they didn’t beat each other out for something they were never going to win doesn’t mean they don’t want to be part of the wedding.” She stalks past him, sounding exasperated and … something else he’s not quite sure of.

“Of course,” he says quickly as he trots to catch up. “Of course they want to be there for you.”

“Not just for me.” She rounds on him. Her palm collides with the center of his chest, stopping his progress. “Why would you say that? Why are you being so … weird?”

He stares at the ground and wishes the April night air were a little bit cooler. He wishes any number of things were a lot cooler.

“I’ve never had a Best Man,” he blurts and hangs his head. He feels like he’s all of sixteen years old again and definitely not one of the guys. “I’ve never had anyone stand up for me before.”

“Never?” she gapes. He steals a glance at her face and he knows what the mixture is now—exasperation plus pity. “How?”

The question is strangely like a hot needle worrying at the uncomfortable knot inside him. It irrationally irritates him, because she should know how, but of course there’s no way she would know. It’s not like their pillow talk involves running through the _dramatis personae _of his previous weddings.

“Meredith—eloped; Gina—didn’t like ‘the optics’ of a formal second wedding.” He hates his own harsh, clipped tone. He shakes himself. He looks at the sidewalk as though he might find the bad attitude heaped around his feet. “Not like I had a ton of candidates either time anyway.”

“You do this time.” She reaches for both his lapels. She waits until he meets her eyes. “Castle, Ryan wants to _be _you when he grows up, and Esposito …” She trails off.

“Esposito?” He prompts.

“Esposito is a social idiot.” She rolls her eyes. “But he loves you, and they both want to stand up for both of us.”

“Both of us?” He manages a shame-faced, mixed success smile. He’s pouting and a little miserable, but it’s funny, too. He knows this is kind of funny. “That’s still a problem, though.”

“Problem?” She narrows her eyes. Exasperation pulls sharply ahead of pity. “Why?”

“Wedding’s coming up fast, Beckett.” He shakes his head in mock concern. “Can you learn to share by then?“


	22. Come One, Come All—Veritas (6 x 22)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She expects to spend a sleepless night thinking of her mother. She expects tears and a racing mind, a hollow feeling deep in the center of her, and no small measure of fear of the unknown, because it’s one thing to prepare for this—to try to prepare for it—and quite another to live through it. To live beyond the work of her entire adult life.

> _“We can make a lot more noise. Is that what you want?”  
—Richard Castle, Veritas (6 x 22)_

* * *

She expects to spend a sleepless night thinking of her mother. She expects tears and a racing mind, a hollow feeling deep in the center of her, and no small measure of fear of the unknown, because it’s one thing to prepare for this—to _try _to prepare for it—and quite another to live through it. To live beyond the work of her entire adult life.

She has told herself so many things in the last few years—that closure cannot be the thing she lives for, and more important, it cannot be the thing she dies for. She’s told herself and told him and told her therapist that she knows that even if she gets it—closure, and justice for her mother and everyone else whose lives Bracken has taken or destroyed—the ending, however it comes, cannot possibly live up to a decade and a half of drive, expectation, obsession.

So she expects a sleepless night—a violent roller coaster of emotion—in the aftermath, but it’s so much quieter than that as it turns out.

It starts with what he’s done, with what he hasn’t done.

There’s nothing out of the ordinary when they get to the loft—no banners or massive bouquets, no fanfare or champagne chilling conspicuously on the counter as she half feared there might be.

There’s also no Martha or Alexis. She starts to tell him that he didn’t have to send them away on her account, when she realizes that he had to send them away on her account.

“California for a couple of days,” he says like it’s nothing. So she lets it be nothing. She lets the fact that her dad is still holed up at his cabin, out of easy reach of both Internal Affairs and Bracken, be nothing, too.

She shakes her head when he asks about dinner, and he doesn’t insist. He hovers a little too much as they get ready for bed at a ridiculously early hour. She stiff arms him and tells him to let her wash her face in peace. They bicker through the closed bathroom door about the gash on her scalp.

“It’s fine,” she mutters, but she relents and opens the door. “It’s a bump, not a head wound,” she adds when she catches him studying her eyes in the mirror to see how well they focus and track.

“Is that an actual medical distinction? Guess we’ll never know,” he grumbles back. “Since you declined medical attention.”

“I don’t remember anyone _offering _medical attention.” She manages a shadow of the wicked smile she’d like to give him. “Which _could _be a sign of concussion.”

“Hmm.” He trails close behind as she makes her way from the bathroom to the bed. He sweeps the covers back from her side, ushering her in with a grand gesture. “Fortunately the amount of sass suggests it’s _not _a concussion.”

“Sass.” She rolls her eyes as he fusses to settle sheet, blanket, duvet over her body, just so.

He climbs in beside her and walks his fingers sideways to find hers. “Will you be able to sleep?”

“Don’t know.” She traces patterns on the back of his hand. “Tired enough.” Her body tells the truth of it when she tries to shift and finds every limb too heavy. “Maybe too tired?’

“Give it a try.” He wriggles his shoulders to settle deeper into the bed. He shuts his eyes, leading by example. One cracks open to peer at her, though, ruining the effect. “If you can’t, I’m right here, okay?” He turns his hand palm up to squeeze her busy fingers. “Don’t tough it out alone.”

“I won’t,” she promises.

And she doesn’t. Mostly, she doesn’t have to. At first, it’s because sleep won’t come. She closes her eyes and the landscape is crowded with her mother’s indecipherable code, federal statute numbers, the image of an ancient cassette tape’s toothed wheels, circling and circling. Her nose is filled with the furry scent of her living room carpet and her body jerks hard when she relives the ear-splitting sound of the SWAT team with their battering ram.

“Kate.” He’s on his side immediately. He’s cautious with his hands, with the softness of her name, wary of startling her. “What is it?”

“My door,” she says. “Do I have a door?”

“You have a door.” His fingers sweep lightly across her forehead. “The door is handled.”

“Good.” She feels the little muscles around her eyes relax. “That’s good.”

She does sleep, then. Lightly, at least, and when her mind breaks the surface into waking, it’s not the harrowing, near-death details offered up on endless repeat. It’s not only those.

It’s disgust and his choked laughter—her choked laughter and her fists pounding weakly at his chest—when she recounts Bracken’s speech in the grimy hotel room and he can’t help but crow that it’s some top-shelf super-villainy. 

It’s after-the-fact outrage at Smith and whoever else is with him. It’s a recounting of the bodies piled up over the course of their _n-_dimensional chess game: Laura Cambridge and Jason Marks. Melanie Rogers and a host of less-than-innocents.

It’s fierce pride and gratitude for Lanie and the call she should never have made. For Ryan and Esposito offering themselves and their careers up. For Gates, and that prompts a burst of laughter free and clear.

“Funny.” He lays a hand against her uppermost ribs to feel it rumbling through her. “What’s funny?”

“Gates. In the bullpen.” It’s all she can manage to get out, but he understands. 

“The way she grabbed Donovan?” He buries his own burst of laughter against her shoulder. “Action hero!” 

“We did it.” She sobers suddenly. “All of us. All of you.” She clings to him as the truth of it settles on her, not for the first time, and not for the last. “I needed all of you.”

“You’ve got us.” He drags his fingers down her spine. “All of us.”

“I don’t know how—” Her voice fails her. She swallows and breathes through it. She calls up the memory of his presence, his fierce declaration in the bullpen. _Whatever happens._“I don’t know how to repay …”

“I do,” he cuts in with a kiss. “We should have a party. A big party.”

“Big?” A smile spreads over her face. It spreads through her whole body—the good kind of roller coaster climb. “How big?”

“Hmmm. About … three hundred people?” He drops his chin to whisper right in her ear. “Hope you’ve got something to wear.”


	23. Travail—For Better or Worse (6 x 23)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Four Stages of Rogan O’Leary are quite the rollercoaster ride. It’s enough—more than enough—to make him hate the fact that he ever suggested getting married on a rollercoaster.

> _“And that’s why I want to marry you.”   
—Kate Beckett, For Better or Worse (6 x 23)_

* * *

The Four Stages of Rogan O’Leary are quite the rollercoaster ride. It’s enough—more than enough—to make him hate the fact that he ever suggested getting married on a rollercoaster.

At first, he sort of loves the idea of him. Or, rather, he thinks that at literally any other moment in time, he would have loved the idea of him, because Kate Beckett’s drunken, drive-thru chapel husband? The notion has considerable appeal.

Not because he wants to take her down a peg or anything. Somewhere around the ten-seconds-after-meeting-her mark, he knew two things with absolute certainty: One, she was out of his league in every way, and two, he’d give anything to be with her. And the moment the idea of Being With Her took on capital-letter status, he accepted—welcomed—spending the rest of his life with someone so very far out of his league.

So it’s not about the fact that Rogan O’Leary is, apparently, a dirtbag’s dirtbag. It’s not about the fact of him … humanizing her or something, though he’d be lying if he said the Early Onset Dork in his past wasn’t a_little _relieved to find that there are some dark corners of her adolescence and young adulthood that aren’t all tight leather, motorcycles, romances with European Nobility—Not Otherwise Specified, and poetry slams.

His early enchantment with the idea of Rogan isn’t about that at all, though. It’s about the fact that there’s nothing he wouldn’t give to know anything of her before that January night. He loves her—loves all of her—entirely and without exception or qualification. He would change nothing about her. Even when she’s grappling with the demons that make her so reckless with herself, even when she is being the epitome of stubborn and holding herself to impossible standards, even when she’s beating him at Scrabble, there isn’t the smallest thing he would change.

But he wishes he could catch a glimpse, just once, of the young woman who was the kind of reckless eighteen-year-olds are supposed to be—the kind who’d head to a drive-thru Vegas chapel like that, even as she set her sights on the US Supreme Court. He wishes he could see her in all glory—strong and self-respecting, not hardened and terrified of loss—as she kicked the compulsive liar to the curb without batting an eye.

His romance with that facet of Rogan ends abruptly, though, when the seriousness of the situation sets in. When he sees how genuinely miserable she is at the prospect of her youthful whim derailing the wedding, it crashes down on him how monstrously unfair it is that her past should rear up to snatch away the happiness she’s only just been able to truly wrap her hands around, because they just fucking _finished_beating back her painful past.

In Stage Two of Rogan, he spends more time than is probably healthy—and certainly more time than he will ever admit in his outside-his-head voice—wondering what it would take to put a contract out on her not-nearly-erstwhile-enough husband.

But murder for hire is probably impractical, so he throws money at Stage Two. He throws his very good lawyer at it, and reluctantly agrees to her divide and conquer plan, because she’s … embarrassed. She feels like she needs to do penance and clean up the mess on her own, and okay, maybe he’d make that one small tweak to his otherwise perfect goddess-cum-future-wife if he could, but in the mean time, he agrees to stay behind.

He holds in reserve the idea of paying out for a time-sensitive hit. He reviews all the guys he knows who know those kinds of guys and revisits the possibility every time she calls and she sounds a little bit smaller, a little bit more desperate. Eventually, he chucks out the idea of summary execution entirely, and instead decides that the man needs to suffer—really _suffer_—just as soon as he signs the divorce papers.

Laying the groundwork for Rogan’s post–Beckett pain is uppermost in his mind when he hits Willow Creek after a more or less sleepless night, but then they meet Tildy. Then they meet Tildy’s mother and Sapphire and the myriad women of Willow Creek who look at her with wounded black anger behind their eyes and tell her _Let him go._Then his relationship to Rogan O’Leary changes again.

He’s disgusted by the man. He’s fascinated and amused by him on the surface of things. And, okay, he’s amused well beneath the surface about the dirtbag genius of Coma Wife, but it’s genuinely awful that this guy—this ridiculous, low-rent con man—has managed to do so much real damage. It’s genuinely awful that he’s _still_doing real damage right this very second, and in Stage Three of Rogan O’Leary, he’s terrified that he’s no better.

He thinks back to three years ago. He thinks of Damien Westlake and his halting confession. _Without him, I’m a lawyer, a grifter, a rodeo clown. _He despises his own trick of the trade, tucking away the most likely outcome between two absurd alternatives. He thinks of the people he’s hurt in the course of cultivating his bad boy image, in the course of insulating himself from any real human interaction. He thinks of the ways he’s hurt_her _over the years, how recently he’s reverted to type and hurt her. 

He’s terrified and sick with amorphous guilt when she hears about the dress, and on top of the fire and every single Rogan-related problem, it’s too much for her. All of a sudden, she’s citing him, chapter and verse, about Signs from the Universe—the most versatile tool in the con-man’s arsenal. All of a sudden, she is worn down and devastated and sure that she somehow deserves this disaster. 

His relationship with the idea of Rogan doesn’t change then. He’s still disgusted. He’s still terrified in his heart of hearts, but in a dizzying reversal, he’s the one talking about work. He’s the one arguing for effort and persistence and _working _at this great love of theirs, because he will not—_will not_—let one more person on this earth, including and especially this dirtbag who might be a Mirrorverse version of himself, take one more damned thing from her. 

Meeting Rogan—entering the final Stage—is an odd combination completely irrelevant and a blessing. He’s such a nonentity. He’s nothing but a doofus stuck in the past. He calls her Kit-Kat and lobs insults that aspire to high-school level wit. He is a relic. 

He doesn’t have a kid, a mother, an avocation that means something. He’s never had anyone or anything he’s had to step up for until maybe now. Until maybe Tildy, and in yet another twist, he turns out to be a victim himself. He’s harmless and he might even be worthy of some exasperated measure of sympathy if he weren’t cursed with the worst luck in the world. If he weren’t about to get them all killed.

But Rogan doesn’t get them all killed. Inspiration strikes at the critical moment, and he doesn’t care if it’s the Universe looking out for them or the culmination of all the work they’ve done. He doesn’t care who or what it is that snips the strings that tether them to cold feet and the stupid, stupid past. He only cares that they’ve managed to kick free and now they can get on with it.

He sends her on her way to the Hamptons. That’s how the Rogan Denouement begins.

“Go,” he tells her, kissing her hard in the middle of the street. “Sort out the dress with Lance. Rest up and do all your … girlie beauty stuff.”

“My girlie beauty stuff?” she laughs and hangs around his neck, but he can feel the tension thrumming through her. He can feel the tug-of-war between what she wants to do and what she thinks she should do.

“Not that you need it.” He brushes his lips over each cheek in turn. “Go, Kate. Spend some time with your dad. Let me do the paperwork for once.”

“The paperwork!” She laughs at that. It rolls over him like a cool, silvery wave crashing in sunlight, and he knows he’s won the day. “You think you can make up for six years with one grand gesture, don’t you?”

“No. No grand gesture.” It comes out a whisper. He’s choked up and overwhelmed. He wants to marry her right then and there, whether he’s good enough or not. He wants to marry her in front of everyone who loves her and him and both of them together. He wants to get them over the finish line to their perfect day. “Just a start on the rest of my life. The rest of our lives.”   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thank you again to all of you reading and following me through this silly journey.


End file.
